Which novelties do donation-and reward-based crowdfunding bring to philanthropy? Scholars interested in crowdfunding contributed to developing empirical explanations on which features impact online giving. However, the focus on theory building is limited. We developed a theoretical framework by categorizing the empirical findings reported in 198 studies, which resulted in four crowdfunding features impacting giving: (1) project creator, (2) social information,(3) rewards, and (4) project description. We explain why these features impact giving by integrating them with insights from several fields of social sciences, deriving ten giving mechanisms. We conclude that with impacting donations via crowdfunding, three giving themes exist: being affected by (1) the perceived project's quality, (2) social connections and/or (3) tangible rewards. The categorization of mechanisms for giving allows initiators to extract best practice examples for increasing the probability of successful crowdfunding projects considering the giving mechanisms.
Drawing on previous conceptualizations of inspiration and the motivational theory of role modeling, this study reports on the development and testing of a donor inspiration framework in a peer‐to‐peer giving context. This framework proposes that individuals become inspired by a source, most likely peer fundraisers, to donate for a particular social cause. Based on observable donor data (N = 8697) that were scraped from the platform of a large peer‐to‐peer fundraising campaign, the results confirm that donor inspiration is a driver of donation behavior. The authors find that the peer fundraisers, the social cause, or a combination can function as the source of inspiration. The findings offer an initial conceptualization for donor inspiration, with concrete implications on donor recruiting strategies, and the design and implementation of peer‐to‐peer campaigns.
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