Abstract
We conducted an intertemporal online experiment to examine the contagion of others’ positive and negative donation behaviors. We collected two sets of data during and after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in China. The participants donated to the charitable fund, “Against COVID-19, The China Charity Federation Is on the Move.” We further investigated the mediating effect of social anxiety on the link between the contagion of donation behaviors and the changes in the COVID-19 situation. A total of 1022 participants (Mage = 22.68, 63.01% females) participated in the intertemporal online experiment and were considered in the statistical analyses. Our findings were as follows. First, the donation behaviors of others significantly changed these participants’ initial donation decisions, with increased or decreased donation amounts being associated with a positive or negative donation behavior, respectively. Others’ positive donation behavior was more likely to nudge these participants into changing their initial decisions (31.82%, Mean = 15.177, SD = 1.586) than negative donation behavior (18.28%, Mean = 12.122, SD = 1.908) during the peak of the pandemic. However, such difference disappeared after the peak because the contagion of positive donation behavior significantly decreased along with the abatement of the pandemic. Second, the participants’ social anxiety decreased along with the abatement of the pandemic, and social anxiety completely mediated the relationship between the pandemic abatement and the decrease in the contagion of positive donation behaviors. These findings advance our understanding of the motivations and influence mechanism of individuals’ donation decisions in the current pandemic situation and help make informed policy making decisions.
Highlights
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020 has inspired donations from people worldwide
We conducted an online survey experiment to investigate how social information affects individuals’ decisions when making actual donations to the charitable fund, “Against COVID-19, The China Charity Federation Is on the Move.”2 In other words, we compared the degrees of contagion of positive and negative donation behaviors in the context of the pandemic
We focus on the mechanism of the contagion of donation behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic, which cannot be considered independently from the prevailing social atmosphere and context during the pandemic
Summary
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020 has inspired donations from people worldwide. Previous studies have shown that individuals change their donations when they are presented with information on the donation behaviors of other donors (Shang and Croson, 2009; Hysenbelli et al, 2013; Smith et al, 2015; van Teunenbroek and Bekkers, 2020). Studies focusing on “who” and “what” show that individuals tend to be influenced by information obtained from others with similar attributes (Tian and Konrath, 2019), especially when such information concerns others’ positive donation behaviors (Shang and Croson, 2009; Hysenbelli et al, 2013; Smith et al, 2015)
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