The antecedents and consequences of charitable donation heterogeneity on social media

Abstract

This study claims that donating is a rational behavior that balances altruism and self-interest; therefore, the frequency and magnitude of donating are picked as crucial criteria to classify different crowdfunders because both of them reflect the rationality of donating. This study identifies 6 clusters of crowdfunders and explores the antecedent variables of the typology based on self-system theory, as well as reveals the social influence of different types of crowdfunders.Data of the crowdfunders (n = 13,868) were collected from "Micro Philanthropy," a popular SNS crowdfunding platform for charity in China. Social Network Service (SNS) profile information such as network features, social interaction features, and the identity of users was found to be significantly related to the typology. Active donors and bounteous donors are more influential than other donors in absorbing the attention of SNS users and attracting new donors. | INTRODUCTIONCrowdfunding is defined as "a collective effort by people who network and pool their money together, usually via the Internet, in order to invest in and support efforts initiated by other people or organizations" (Ordanini, Miceli, Pizzetti, & Parasuraman, 2011, p. 444). In the past few years, crowdfunding has been used as a solution to the financial challenges faced by cultural organizations (Ordanini et al., 2011), journalism (Jian & Usher, 2014), business (Belleflammea, Lambert, & Schwienbacher, 2014;Stemler, 2013), and philanthropy (Saxton & Wang, 2014).Crowdfunding is new born in China and a lot of crowdfunding was done on social media such as Weibo (the most popular microblog service in China, such as Twitter). Weibo has built a block for charitable crowdfunding named as "Micro Philanthropy" on which ordinary people, NGOs, or other organizations could post queries asking for help and donation. Based on an analysis of 13,868 crowdfunders on "Micro Philanthropy," this study aims to depict a picture about the characteristics of Chinese charitable crowdfunders and suggest a model that explores both the antecedent variables that could explain the typology and the consequences caused by the heterogeneity of the crowdfunders. | THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CROWDFUNDING AND CHARITYThe primary idea of crowdfunding is that small monetary donation from the crowd could finance a project that needs a large number of capital. Crowdfunding is fueled by three actors: the people or organizations that are seeking funding, the Internet users who contribute to the projects, and the Internet platform that brings the parties together to launch the idea (Ordanini et al., 2011). "Micro Philanthropy," the crowdfunding platform focused by this study, allows each user to start fundraising and provide detailed description about the people who are in need of help along with photos. Each program specifies the identity of the recruiters, the profile of the subjects that are in need of help, the target amount of fundraising, and the amount of money raised by the program. A voluntary group will take the ...

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