Altruism or social motives? evidence from online charitable giving in China

ABSTRACT

Despite the rapid development of online charitable giving (OCG), there are few empirical studies on the motivations of OCG. This study examines two typical types of motivations (i.e., altruism and social motives). We build a model by combining the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion with social influence theory. Using a dataset of 13,119 projects from Weibo Charity, a leading OCG platform in China, we find that the primary motivation of OCG comes from social motives rather than altruism. This study contributes to the relevant literature and provides practical implications for OCG project sponsors and platform managers.

KEYWORDS:

• Online charitable giving
• motivation
• altruism
• social motives
• elaboration likelihood model
• social influence theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. https://institute.blackbaud.com/asset/2018-charitable-giving-report/

2. https://ai.baidu.com/tech/nlp_apply/sentiment_classify/

3. https://fortune.com/2014/08/22/ice-bucket-challenge-als-charity/

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71732008, 71821002, 71931009, 71972168, 91546107].