TY - JOUR
T1 - Do virtual goods entice more online donations? perspectives of mental imagery and project appeal
AU - Zheng, Chundong
AU - Cao, Yanan
AU - Wu, Yi
AU - Yu, Jie
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors sincerely thank the editor-in-chief, associate editor, and anonymous reviewers for their highly constructive comments throughout the whole review process. This study was partially funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China ( 72172102 , 72172103 , and 72231004 ) and the Shandong Industrial Internet Innovation and Entrepreneurship Community.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2023/3
Y1 - 2023/3
N2 - Most existing research on online fundraising options has examined monetary settings. Recently, a new option has emerged that uses virtual goods. In this setting, donors choose between different amounts of virtual goods rather than different amounts of money. Whether this setting of options will impact donors' willingness to donate has yet been empirically tested in the literature. We propose that the concreteness of the donation option itself plays an important role here, and we compare the influences of two different donation option settings, i.e., virtual goods option and monetary option, on individuals' donation willingness. We conducted three experiments and found that charity projects using the virtual goods option are better able to entice donations than those using monetary settings. This effect is mediated by mental imagery and is moderated by the types of project appeals (i.e., altruistic vs. egoistic). Finally, both the theoretical and practical contributions of this research are discussed.
AB - Most existing research on online fundraising options has examined monetary settings. Recently, a new option has emerged that uses virtual goods. In this setting, donors choose between different amounts of virtual goods rather than different amounts of money. Whether this setting of options will impact donors' willingness to donate has yet been empirically tested in the literature. We propose that the concreteness of the donation option itself plays an important role here, and we compare the influences of two different donation option settings, i.e., virtual goods option and monetary option, on individuals' donation willingness. We conducted three experiments and found that charity projects using the virtual goods option are better able to entice donations than those using monetary settings. This effect is mediated by mental imagery and is moderated by the types of project appeals (i.e., altruistic vs. egoistic). Finally, both the theoretical and practical contributions of this research are discussed.
KW - Donation willingness
KW - Mental imagery
KW - Monetary option
KW - Online donation
KW - Project appeals
KW - Virtual goods
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85146305205&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.im.2023.103754
DO - 10.1016/j.im.2023.103754
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85146305205
SN - 0378-7206
VL - 60
JO - Information and Management
JF - Information and Management
IS - 2
M1 - 103754
ER -