Research on the Influence of Donation Resource Abun-dance on Individual's Willingness to Donate to Abstract Target
Charity is an effective way to bring together social forces to improve people's livelihood and well-being,as well as an import-ant way to achieve common prosperity.In order to enhance the pub-lic's engagement into charitable donations,charitable organizations enhance the identification of victims in the design of donation ap-peals.The identifiable victim effect can boost individual's donations to identifiable and specific targets in the short term,but would have potentially negative effects in the long term.However,the extant lit-erature focuses most on concrete individual's willingness to donate identifiable targets,ignoring the donation to abstract targets and its inducing factors.This research suggests that individual's willing-ness to donate to abstract targets depend on the resources of money or time people have.On this basis,this research aims to examine the impact of donation resource abundance on individual's willing-ness to donate to abstract targets,and investigates the psychological mechanism of this effect from the perspective of perceived efficacy as well as the moderating role of the message construal of donation appeals.One secondary data investigation and three experiments were carried out in our research.In Study 1,a secondary data investi-gation was conducted to test the relationship between individual's donation resource abundance and willingness to donate to abstract targets by collecting and analyzing the real online donation data of China Charity Federation with donation amount as the proxy variable of donation resource abundance.In Study 2,a single-factor between-subject experimental design was deployed to construct an experimental scenario based on Alipay's"Walking Donation"charitable activities.The degree of donation resource abundance was manipulated by the amount of"Charitable Coins"held,and the preference between the two types of donation items-specific targets and abstract targets-was measured,so as to examine the impact of resource abundance on individual's willingness to donate to abstract targets.On this basis,Study 3 manipulated donation resource abundance through different ways,that is the ranking of holding"charitable coins"among users,to repeatedly test the above effect of donation resource abundance and investigate the mediating role of perceived efficacy is explored.Further,through a 2(dona-tion resource abundance:limited vs.abundant)×2(type of message appeal:low-vs.high-level)between-subject experimental designs,Study 4 manipulated the message construal of donation appeals,in other to investigate the impact of donation resource abundance on individual's willingness to donate to abstract targets under the con-ditions of high-and low-level of message appeals.This research shows that individual's willingness to donate to ab-stract targets depends on donation resource abundance:compared with limited resources,individuals with abundant resources are more likely to choose an abstract target(vs.a concrete target)than those with limited resources.Such effect of donation resource abundance on willingness to donate is mediated by perceived ef-ficacy and moderated by message construal of donation appeals.Specifically,abundant resources allow individuals to have greater perceived efficacy,rather than the greater empathy nor perceived responsibility,which in turn affects their willingness to donate the abstract target.Individuals are more likely to choose the abstract target when abundant donation resources align with a high-level or abstract message appeal,however,there is no significant difference in willingness to donate the abstract target between individuals with limited donation resources and individuals with abundant donation resources align with a low-level or concrete message appeal.This research makes important theoretical contributions to the relevant literature in the field of charitable giving.First,existing literature on donation targets has consistently shown that people are more inclined to donate to specific and identifiable targets,but ignore when they would prefer donating to abstract targets,such as groups of people or pubic welfare projects.This research enriches the literature on the identifiable victim effect of charitable giving from the perspective of resource abundance,and expands the driv-ing factors of consumer donation behavior by identifying the role of individual's resource abundance.Second,this research reveals that perceived efficacy plays the mediating role in the influence of donation resource abundance on individual's willingness to donate to abstract targets,which enriches the driving factor of individual's donation to abstract targets.Finally,from the perspective of con-strual level theory,this research identifies the moderating role of message construal of donation appeals,providing new insights into the relationship between donor characteristics(i.e.,donation re-source abundance),message construal(i.e.,low-or high-level)and types of donation targets(i.e.,abstract or concrete targets).This research also has important practical implications for chari-table organizations to design donations that appeal to the abstract targets.First,charity practitioners could deploy targeted publicity and personalized recommendations based on the potential donors'donation resource abundance(such as income level,previous dona-tion amount,etc.).Therefore,donation appeals of abstract targets should be placed in where high-income people or willing donors are likely to frequent visit,which would effectively increase the effec-tiveness of giving.Second,charitable organizations can use online public charity platforms to change users'perception of resource abundances and thus increasing users'willingness to donate to ab-stract donation targets(such as low-identifiable projects or public welfare projects).Third,charitable organizations should adopt a message appeal suitable for the abstract target when designing the donation appeal,so as to attract individuals with abundant resourc-es to donate to abstract targets.For instance,when designing the message appeal of donation projects with abstract targets,charitable organizations should deploy abstract message for those who have abundant donation resources to promote the projects.
万方数据
维普
