Campaigns for personal health expenses make up the largest and fastest-growing segment of donation-based crowdfunding. Set against the backdrop of retrenchment and disinvestment in public healthcare systems across the global North, health-related crowdfunding is a way to navigate increasingly marketised systems of social reproduction. Despite high profile success stories, campaigns vary significantly in their ability to capture the hearts, and ultimately wallets, of donors. While existing analyses of online campaign pages offer some insight into the marketing of healthcare needs, far less is known about practices and experiences of crowdfunding platform users, including campaigners. Bringing literature on crowdfunding together with accounts of the marketisation of care, our paper asks: how do campaigners work to secure crowdfunded healthcare? Through the accounts of 15 people campaigning on behalf of family or friends in Aotearoa New Zealand, we show how attempts to appeal to donors depend on campaigners’ abilities to ‘market’ illness and need in ways that resonate with the crowd. We have two main foci. First, we examine the responsibility and responsibilisation of campaigners to engage and perform accountability to crowdfunders. Second, we show how campaigners mobilise recipients’ traits of deservingness and other culturally favoured personal qualities to appeal to the crowd's perceived predilections. In sum, the paper demonstrates how the use of crowdfunding is both necessitated by the marketisation of healthcare while simultaneously exerting its own form of market discipline.
Given the strong links between food security and wellbeing, addressing the increasing lack of access to adequate, appropriate food is necessary to realise the current Aotearoa New Zealand government's wellbeing-related ambitions. This qualitative survey study engages with the experiences of over 600 food insecure people by analysing open-ended survey responses regarding their experiences of food insecurity and their goals and dreams for the future. Countering neoliberal narratives of the poor as lacking 'ambition', our data suggest that participants have extensive goals and dreams for the future, but systemic income inadequacy severely limits them in achieving their aspirations. Many participants aspire for appropriate and fulfilling employment, financial security, and to secure a good life for their whānau; yet current welfare policy settings undermine their aspirations and are at odds with the Government's own vision of wellbeing, as formalised in the Treasury's Living Standards Framework. This suggests the exclusion of food insecure people from our national shared vision of wellbeing. We conclude by highlighting the value of understanding and including the goals and dreams of those who are food insecure in the intention, design, and delivery of reforms needed to enhance food security in Aotearoa New Zealand.
INTRODUCTION: Food insecurity in Aotearoa New Zealand is a growing concern but quantitative evidence focused on those in most need of support is scarce in the Aotearoa New Zealand context. This limits policy and practice decisions.METHODS: We modified Parnell and Gray’s (2014) Aotearoa New Zealand based food security scale to better capture the severity of food insecurity for individuals living in poverty and used a questionnaire to collect data from a sample of individuals seeking food assistance from foodbanks in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland). We used confirmatory factor analysis to assess the psychometric validity of the modified scale. We also tested group differences in food insecurity by gender and ethnicity using analysis of variance and investigated correlations between age, household size and food insecurity.FINDINGS: We found a six-item version of Parnell and Gray’s (2014) scale to be psychometrically robust for use with the study population. The sample participants reported concerning and chronic levels of food insecurity. We did not find any group differences.CONCLUSIONS: At the severe end of the food insecurity continuum, gender and ethnic subgroups appear to suffer at similar levels; however, this does not suggest that different approaches are not required to best meet the needs of different demographic subgroups. Further research is needed to ascertain how similar levels of food insecurity may produce differential effects on wellbeing outcomes for different groups. We recommend more widespread and regular use of the modified scale to assess the experience and impact of food insecurity for individuals living in poverty because it provides a more fine-grained understanding of the severity of food insecurity challenges experienced by individuals seeking food assistance. Fit for purpose measures enable accurate assessments that can better inform policymaking and practice decisions to reduce inequality and promote economic justice.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.