Factors impacting donors’ intention to donate to charitable crowd-funding projects in China: a UTAUT-based model

ABSTRACT

The new and increasingly popular tool of crowd-funding is widely used by non-profit organizations in China to raise money online for their charitable projects. In order to use this tool effectively, it is essential to understand donors’ motivations for supporting charitable projects. This study investigates the impact of performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE), social influence (SI), facilitating conditions (FC), sense of trust, and experience expectation on donors’ intention to donate to charitable crowd-funding projects, using a research model based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model. Empirical data were collected through a survey, and structural equation modeling was used to analyze 316 responses from users of the Tencent charitable crowd-funding platform in China. The results indicate that SI, sense of trust, EE, and PE significantly affect donors’ intention to donate to charitable crowd-funding projects. The impact of FC and experience expectation on donors’ intention is also positive; however, it is not very strong. Finally, this paper presents suggestions for how to increase users’ intention to donate money on charitable crowd-funding platforms.

KEYWORDS:

• Charitable crowd-funding
• non-profit organizations
• donation intention
• donation impact factors
• UTAUT

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ya-Zheng Li is a media management PhD candidate in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Science and Technology of China. His research interests include digital publishing, E-Learning, and new media of nonprofit [email: [email protected]].

Tong-Liang He is a journalism and communication graduate from the Department of Science and Technology of Communication and Policy, University of Science and Technology of China. His research interests include new media and digital publishing [email: [email protected]].

Yi-Ran Song is a cultural philosophy graduate from the Department of Science and Technology Communication and Policy, University of Science and Technology of China. Her research interests include new media, game study and e-commerce [email: [email protected]].

Zheng Yang is a post-graduate student in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Science and Technology of China. His research interests include new media, advertising and science communication [email: [email protected]].

Rong-Ting Zhou is a professor and doctoral supervisor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Science and Technology of China. He currently serves as the dean of Institute of New Media and the head of the Department of Science and Technology of Communication and Policy. His research interests include new media, e-commerce, NGO, science communication and online education [email: [email protected]].