Empathy and Moral Identity as Predictors of Peer Support Volunteerism for Preventing Farmer Suicide in Punjab

The main focus of the present study was to see the relative contribution of empathy and moral identity in peer support volunteerism for preventing suicide among farmers of Punjab. The sample comprised of 30 students from Punjab who agreed for becoming a peer support volunteer in the prevention of farmers’ suicide in Punjab and 33 students who declined the same. For this purpose, the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (Spreng, Margaret, McKinnon, Raymond, & Levine, 2009) and Moral Identity Scale (Aquino & Reed, 2002) were administered. Binary logistic regression was run to examine to what extent it is possible to predict volunteerism from empathy and moral identity. Results showed that empathy and moral identity internalisation were found to be significant predictors of peer support volunteerism while moral identity symbolisation was found to be a non-significant predictor of peer support volunteerism. The current findings suggest that enhancing empathy and moral identity can help individuals to be involved in prosocial acts and volunteerism.