Abstract
Public welfare fundraising has been used to collect donations for medical supplies and has played an important role in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper studies online crowdfunding donations from the Alumni Association of Wuhan University to North American alumni; donation data are used to investigate how individuals' donation behavior is affected by the previous donation amount and information provided by the fundraising platform. First, our results show that one's donation amount is positively affected by the previous donation amount. Second, the donor's positive sentiment in the message that he or she leaves, as measured by either natural language processing or a manual rating, can affect the subsequent anonymity and messages but not the subsequent donation amount. Third, anonymous donations are much smaller than non-anonymous donations.
Highlights
Online public welfare fundraising, in which donors are purely donating and asking for nothing in return, is gradually replacing on-site fundraising because of its advantages of faster dissemination, its ability to reach a larger audience, and its greater pertinence
The social norm effect reveals that donors tend to mimic other people’s donations after observing how much they donate
This paper conducts a broader study on compliance with social norms and finds that donors’ imitation of others is not limited to the amount of money donated and includes their choice of anonymity and the positive sentiment expressed in their messages
Summary
In which donors are purely donating and asking for nothing in return, is gradually replacing on-site fundraising because of its advantages of faster dissemination, its ability to reach a larger audience, and its greater pertinence. With the development of the internet and the changes in charity crowdfunding channels, online charity platforms offer opportunities for fundraisers to provide potential donors with information that could influence their behaviors. In a disaster that affects a wide range of areas and a large number of people, people can share experience messages online and quickly allocate social resources through online crowdfunding donations, which is especially important and effective. The features of this kind of donation can provide insights for research focusing on individuals’ donation behaviors in charitable crowdfunding projects launched to fight against disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic. We first outline the literature review and hypothesis development, second describe the data and method, third present the results, and offer the discussion and conclusion
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