Disentangling the effects of narrative and statistical evidence on donations in charitable crowdfunding: A narrative persuasion perspective

Zhengzhi Guan, Boying Li, Alain Yee Loong Chong, Fangfang Hou, Zhao Cai, Eric T.K. Lim, Chee Wee Tan

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

Abstract

Although charitable crowdfunding has emerged as the de facto avenue for people in need of urgent financial assistance to engage in fundraising, many campaigns suffer from problems of underfunding. Because charitable crowdfunding campaigns rely primarily on project description to attract donations, these project descriptions, in a bid to convince prospective donors, often blend narrative evidence describing what happened to the donatee with statistical evidence encapsulating quantifiable figures to corroborate the narration. Espousing the narrative persuasion theory, this study aims to elucidate how interactions between constituent components of narrative evidence (i.e., imaginable plot, identifiable character, narrative sentiment, and text elaborateness) and statistical evidence affect donations in charitable crowdfunding. Secondary data of 2,054 charity projects was collected from a mainstream charitable crowdfunding platform in China, and multiregression is proposed for data analysis. Findings from this study could advance knowledge of how narrative and statistical evidence jointly influence donations in charitable crowdfunding.

Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 2020
Event24th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems: Information Systems (IS) for the Future, PACIS 2020 - Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Duration: 20 Jun 202024 Jun 2020

Conference

Conference24th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems: Information Systems (IS) for the Future, PACIS 2020
Country/TerritoryUnited Arab Emirates
CityDubai
Period20/06/2024/06/20

Keywords

  • Charitable Crowdfunding
  • Narrative Evidence
  • Narrative Persuasion Theory
  • Statistical Evidence

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Information Systems

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