Itay Greenspan

• PhD
• Senior Lecturer at Hebrew University of Jerusalem

This article examines the Americanization of Israeli conservative civil society organizations (CSOs), by exploring how the transnational transfer of Jewish American philanthropy and the diffusion of conservative ideas influence the formation of right-wing Israeli CSOs, applying the theoretical framework of critical community. “Critical Community” i...

Shemitah , the Jewish sabbatical year, is increasingly being explored in ecological contexts. This research delves into the concept of stewardship examining the evolving discourse on Shemitah across different community sectors in the Israeli press during the last three sabbatical cycles (2007–2008, 2014–2015, and 2021–2022). Our analysis reveals st...

Purpose: Supported decision-making (SDM) is an emerging and innovative alternative to substitute decision-making practices. While relationships are pivotal in establishing proper and effective SDM, scant research has examined these relationships in-depth. This study explores how decision-making supporters perceive relationships embedded in SDM for...

To understand the intergenerational transmission of pro-environmental behaviors within a family, we employ a nationally representative survey of young adults and their parents living within the United States. We analyze intergenerational transmission for three generations with information on children, parent, and grandparent behavior. Our findings...

Volunteering by immigrants provides dual a contribution: To civil society, immigrant volunteers can add an untapped human and social capital, social diversity and multiculturalism; to the immigrant, volunteering offers cultural, economic, and social benefits in their integration efforts. Yet, we need a more multidimensional probing of the term ‘imm...

A heated cultural and religious debate endures in the Muslim world around the question of whether Islamic theology allows for giving religious philanthropy to non-Muslims, as individuals or nonprofit organizations. The debate pertains especially to the practice of zakat, which considered to be a religious practice of giving to Muslim compatriots. Y...

This scientific review presents a framework for defining critical social capital resources that relate directly to the well-being of individuals and communities in Israel. It was commissioned as part of the work of the is part of a larger project of the Expert Committee of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities on Sustainable Well-Being in I...

This paper investigates the underlying motivations for environmental behaviors among two generations of South Koreans: parents (ages 42–61) and their children (ages 18–28). While previous research has documented intergenerational transmission (IGT) of environmental attitudes and behaviors, what is not known is whether individuals exhibit similar mo...

Despite plethora of research on environmental participatory processes, the forms of NGO involvement in these processes, and the influence of their involvement on participation outcomes, are still under-conceptualized. This paper aims to develop a conceptual typology for NGO roles in environmental participatory processes and to suggest how these rol...

We seek to understand how environmentalism is experienced, discussed and transmitted by South Korean families in the context of changing economic and environmental circumstances. Qualitative interviews with three-generation Korean families are used, in a country characterised in the past fifty years by rapid economic changes alongside continuation...

Taking a culturally sensitive approach, we set out to explore the social response to, and the cultural adoption of, charity sport events in Israel, where this phenomenon is relatively new and understudied. We show that charity sport events participation is accepted with mixed feelings: participants are motivated by their novice athletic aspirations...

This paper focuses on intergenerational transmission of environmental behavior, i.e., the processes by which environmental behavior is negotiated and shaped within the family. We offer an analysis of two correlates of child environmental behavior: parental environmental behaviors (as intergenerational transmission) and socialization domains (parent...

We investigate the bridging interactions between migrant-background and native-born volunteers. Bridging interactions are the connections that occur across social lines between dissimilar groups. Bridging interactions are a core topic in civil society research that is concerned with questions of trust-building through volunteering and civic engagem...

Previous research that has tried to identify the personal values that best explain variance in pro-environmental attitudes tended to focus on biospheric and universalism values. This paper examines the importance of self-direction as a value underlying young people's inclination to adopt pro-environmental behaviors and environmental activism. We ex...

Volunteering is an under-studied yet potentially beneficial avenue for immigrant integration. Whereas past research has provided important insights into the benefits of immigrant volunteering, it has been frequently based on convenience samples. This paper contributes to the literature on immigrant volunteering on two levels. First, we test less ex...

This paper introduces a configurational approach to the study of multiple identities. Specifically, it examines how prosocial identity combines with collective and individualistic identities in conflicting and enhancing ways to affect prosocial behavior in organizational settings. We examine an unexplored intuition in the multiple identities litera...

Using the social-psychological literature on the antecedents of environmental behaviour and comparative data from Germany, India, Israel and South Korea, we test four value types that correspond with environmental behaviour. Our cross-national context represents varying social, economic, cultural and environmental configurations, giving credence to...

Israel’s rich philanthropic landscape dates back to biblical times, showing both change and continuity throughout the years. The modern era of Israel’s history can be divided into four different periods: (1) prior to the 1880s, (2) the pre-state era, from the 1880s to 1948, (3) the statist era, from 1948 to the mid-1970s, and (4) the pluralist era,...

This article uses a social return on investment (SROI) methodology to analyze the social impact of a social enterprise offering a job and skills training program to an unemployed, largely female population. The social enterprise is based in Toronto (Canada) and run by a nonprofit agency dedicated to the advancement and empowerment of women, primari...

Measuring social impact of social enterprises has become a ‘search for the holy grail’. This paper offers an underexplored perspective of social impact assessment by integrating clients’ evaluation of the impact of the program. Drawing on the literature of ‘met expectations’, we investigate the personal and social impact, beyond job placement, of j...

This research compares environmental volunteering among students in South Korea and the US (n=3,612). Given differing environmental histories of these countries, we explore whether and to what extent volunteer proclivity and intensity varies, and potential factors that explain existing variation. Findings suggest that American students are more lik...

ISTR Voluntas Best Paper Awards for 2012 and 2013 were awarded at the ISTR Conference in Munster, 23rd July 2014. The Best Paper Award Committee’s rationale and citation of the two prize winning articles are presented here. ISTR’s journal Voluntas is a highly productive journal, which has published an increasing number of articles in recent years,...

This paper compares and contrasts environmental philanthropy, environmental behavior, and their determinants among university students in five countries: Canada, Germany, Israel, South Korea, and the United States. The paper’s unique contribution to the nonprofit literature is its focus on environmental philanthropy as an unexplored form of philant...

This article offers a Bourdieu-inspired organizational analysis of advocacy nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Pierre Bourdieu’s writings provide valuable propositions for understanding nonprofit advocacy resources that go beyond commonly analyzed economic, human, or social resources. The article describes the relational, accumulative, and trans...

We report results of a recent national survey of the Israeli environmental movement, assessing its activities, strategies, and financial viability. Since the early 1990s, the movement has undergone significant expansion, with numerous new organisations at both local and national levels. The movement is undergoing notable operational and ideological...

The authors analyze environmental philanthropy as a form of environmental behavior that has received scant attention in the literature. Environmental philanthropy refers to the giving of time and money in support of environmental issues through environmental nongovernmental organizations. The authors examine the way values, knowledge, political ori...

This study explores the external environment within which Israeli environmental nongovernmental organizations (ENGOs) operate, with particular attention to their relationships with, and dependence on, philanthropic foundations. A growing body of literature has been devoted in recent years to the importance of foundation philanthropy in support of E...

Environmental issues are particularly salient for today's generation of young adults. Indeed, many have suggested that it will be this generation that will lead the environmental movement forward. Therefore, this study examines the motivations and mechanisms that influence proclivity and intensity of young adults' environmental volunteerism. Using...

The literature on volunteering has consistently found a positive relationship between an individual's religious proclivity and volunteering. However, one might argue that for immigrants wishing to integrate – socially and economically – into a host society, the decision to volunteer will be equally influenced by other instrumental motives. Thus, we...

This article explores the relationship between voluntary activity of first-generation immigrants who attend ethnic congregations and their civic participation outside their congregations. We distinguish between attendance and volunteering within the congregation and examine whether and how these concepts relate to civic participation in the wider c...

This article investigates volunteering by immigrants. It examines if and how volunteering experiences can attenuate the effects of relocation for immigrants as they seek to regain social and human capital lost in the migration process. Based on analysis of 754 surveys, 33 focus groups, and 34 in-depth interviews, the authors explore the volunteerin...

This study explores how adventure mountain tourists and their local hosts relate to, benefit from, and are influenced by, technology. It examines the impact of technology on the everyday lives of climbers, hikers, and service providers, and considers the capacities of technology to facilitate social behavior, interactions, and relationships. A narr...

[instead of abstract] Charitable sports events aim to engage as many people as possible as participants and fund raisers in support of local or international social causes. This method of raising money was initially used for “walks” in which donors “sponsored” participants on a per-mile basis. Participants earned donations only for the actual dista...

Environmental Narratives are storylines, told about an environment or a place, or about issues, and people, and their relationships with an environment. As in many other places, stories about the environment are constantly produced in Palestine 2 as well as in Israel by a variety of actors that are working in different ways to address environmental...

Purpose – The goal of this chapter is to understand the role of nonprofit voluntary health organizations (VHOs) in the lives of Canadian women coping with breast cancer. Methodology – Through qualitative interviews with breast cancer survivors and records of VHOs active in this field, we assess the level and nature of their interactions and impact...