Conformity or Counter-Conformity Behavior? The Effect of Prior Charitable Giving in Donation-Based Crowdfunding

Charitable crowdfunding is a new and rapidly developing way of fundraising, attracting interest from academics and practitioners. Existing research on reward-based crowdfunding and charitable giving cannot fully explain donation behaviors in donation-based crowdfunding. Developing methods for promoting donations is of interest to practitioners, and it remains unclear whether prior donation information promotes or inhibits subsequent contributions. To explore this question, we used data from the Tencent Philanthropy platform to analyze the impact of previous donation information. The results revealed a negative relationship between the cumulative donation amount and subsequent contributions. The cumulative donation amount had no significant impact on the number of donors, but reduced the amounts of individual contributions. Although a larger cumulative number of previous donors resulted in larger individual donation amounts, this number was associated with a smaller number of subsequent donors, resulting in a zero net effect of donor number on subsequent donations. Our results indicate that conformity and anti-conformity donation behaviors exist simultaneously in donation-based crowdfunding, elucidating the mechanisms underlying the effects of prior donation information on reducing subsequent contributions. Our findings deepen the theoretical understanding of individual donation behavior, providing helpful insight for practitioners designing presentation strategies for charitable crowdfunding projects.