The Support Provider Matters: Exploring the Influence of Support Provider Characteristics on Social Support Provision

Abstract

Social support is a major source of enrichment within dyadic relationships due to its role in alleviating stress as well as providing a variety of tangible and psychological resources that assist individuals in goal pursuit. Although social support is a dyadic process involving a support provider and a support recipient, the extant literature has remained fairly silent regarding how the support provider’s characteristics influence support provision. Additionally, little is known about driving factors behind the various types of social support provided. In this dissertation, I examine six primary support provider characteristics emergent from self-determination theory (relationship quality, perspective taking, role knowledge, general self-efficacy, attachment orientation, and prosocial identity) that should influence the type and amount of social support provided. Drawing on a sample of 109 matched pairs of workplace and nonwork support providers identified by a support recipient, I used structural equation modeling and multiple regression to test a series of hypotheses examining the influence of these six characteristics on provision of specific types of social support. The results showed that relationship quality was a significant predictor of both instrumental and emotional social support. Additionally, general self-efficacy was a significant predictor of instrumental social support. These findings are important to social support research as they begin the process of understanding the support provider, thus providing possible new pathways to bolster social support provision. Further, these findings extend the high quality relationships literature by highlighting the positive gains from cultivating fulfilling relationships with others.