An Empirical Analysis on Determinants of Aid Allocation by South Korean Civil Society Organizations

This paper examines whether three sets of factors—humanitarianism, the South Korean government’s official aid, and concerns regarding performance—affect South Korean CSOs’ decisions regarding aid recipients and the amount of aid to them. The statistical results of these two-stage analyses show that South Korean CSOs take into consideration different sets of factors at each stage of their aid allocation decisions. While humanitarianism and ODA allocation are consistently important at both stages of South Korean CSOs’ aid allocation decisions, performance concerns for aid effectiveness and efficiency (language and religion) matter especially at the second stage. Governance level of a developing country has a positive relationship with aid allocation decisions, while the direction of influence changes when only recipient countries are included in the regression analysis. These findings suggest that concerns regarding accountability and autonomy of CSOs in the context of their growing engagement in development cooperation may be unwarranted.