Foreign aid may not improve how recipients view donor countries – but it can set off a chain of goodwill that spreads far beyond the original act of giving.

That is what a colleague and I found when we studied how South Koreans responded to COVID-19 vaccines donated by the United States.

The South Korean government reserved donated Johnson & Johnson vaccines for military reservists and, for medical reasons, excluded anyone under 30. As a result, we could compare the views of South Koreans just above and below that threshold.

We found that the donated vaccines did not improve people’s views of the United States. South Koreans who received American vaccines reported similar views of the U.S. as those who had not been vaccinated.

Yet the results were striking in another way. Those who received donated American vaccines became more supportive of their own government sending aid abroad. Recipients shifted........

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