The studies we summarized so far underline that differences in helping across regions,
communities, or nations are not uniform. But we have teased out systematic variations:
Whether helping is more or less likely to occur in a particular context strongly depends on the type of helping and the target of helping. The findings suggest that providing spontaneous and low-effort aid to a stranger is more frequent in traditional, less affluent and rural areas than in modern, affluent and urban environments, whereas the opposite is the case for planned and long-term helping directed at out-group members, namely volunteering. Yet, there is the question of where differences in spontaneous helping and volunteering across regions come from.