Do Factors Driving Prosocial Behaviors Promote Fundraising in Medical Crowdfunding?——Evidence from Qingsong Chou
Medical crowdfunding solves the problem of lacking medical expenses for poor patients with severe ill-nesses though online donations.Thus,finding the key factors to improve the fundraising performance is of great significance for patients and their family.Here,with the high-frequency data of 125,893 medical crowdfunding projects on Qingsong Chou in China,these factors are uncovered from the perspectives of creators,projects,backers,and prosocial behavior mechanisms.Differing from previous studies,the variables of prosocial behavior mechanisms are defined from the perspective of help-seeker's characteristics,benefactor's ability,and external environment.The linear regression model and logistic regression model are employed to check the validity oftheseprosocial factors.It is found that social network and social capital of creators and project quality have a postive effect on the fundraising performance.It is also found that the period of projects negatively affect on raising funds,and the goal of projects may decrease the probability of success and increase other project performance.More importantly,the factors driving prosocial behavior play a significant role in promoting money collection in the medical crowdfunding.Females,children and cancer patients who can attract more help are much easier to raise funds.Furthermore,projects from high-income areas and those created during the Spring Festival have a strong ability to attract funds.However,emphasising on the poverty will inhibit fundrais-ing.In addition,the effectiveness of prosocial behavior mechanisms is further confirmed through robustness tests.It is found that the donating willingness of potential supporters only increases during the Spring Festival and children is the mostcrucial factorto improve the fundraise in comparison of females and cancer patients.These findings can not only provide effective strategies for project creators to improve fundraising,but also provide new thoughts for relieving the regional imbalance of online donations and promoting the sound develop-ment of medical crowdfunding.
medical crowdfundingfundrasing performancefactors driving prosocial behaviorQingsong Chou
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
