Statistics show that 20 internet crowdfunding platforms raised a total of more than 3.17 billion in 2018, with more than 8.46 billion clicks. The rapid development of public crowdfunding is closely related to the communication form based on strong social relations among acquaintances. Members at the center of the community drive the communication of public information within the group and then spread it to different communities, forming the so-called cluster communication. On the other hand, the platform has frequently exposed charitable crowdfunding scandals of 'fraudulent donation' and 'fake donation' through social media.
The Theory of Planned Behavior(TPB) holds that people's behavior is a rational process that generates behavioral intention and eventually concrete behavior after the evaluation of beliefs, and is applicable to a variety of behavioral fields. This phenomenon is also reflected in the charitable crowdfunding. However, the hypothesis of TPB has been criticized by many scholars since it was put forward, which holds that behavior can also be automated or driven by habit. In this case, people may automatically implement donation behaviors due to trust, ignoring the consideration of perceived costs such as the effectiveness of donation projects and the risk of donation information. Especially when in medical crowdfunding, due to information overload and serious tendency of project homogenization, people will automatically filter such charitable crowdfunding messages and reject donation. At present there is little literature discuss the inner mechanism in which internet interpersonal trust can influence willingness of donation and the possible negative effects (kindness preference or kindness bias).
To sum up, this paper aims to explore the following questions :(1) what paths can online interpersonal trust affect charitable crowdfunding in social media? (2) what are the effects of different paths on the charitable crowdfunding? The theoretical significance of this study lies in enriching the micro mechanism of charitable crowdfunding from the perspective of TPB, while the practical significance lies in improving the risk identification ability of users of charitable crowdfunding, improving the current ecological environment of charitable crowdfunding, and forming a healthy and sustainable virtuous trend.
This paper uses questionnaire surveys and structural equation modeling(SEM) methods to explore the perceived value and perceived cost of donors in Internet charitable crowdfunding, builds an intermediary effect model of online interpersonal trust in social media that influences charitable crowdfunding willingness, and makes 545 contributions data analysis of charitable crowdfunding. The empirical results show that: 1. Internet interpersonal trust and perceived value can positively significantly affect users' willingness to do charitable crowdfunding; 2. There is a significant negative relationship between the perceived cost of users and willingness to do charitable crowdfunding; 3. The perceived value of Internet interpersonal trust and the willingness to crowdfunding play a part of the mediating role, and the mediating effect of perceived cost is not obvious. Therefore, the research findings help to enrich and deepen the understanding of kindness machines, and provide theoretical guidance and practical reference for the sustainable and healthy development of charitable crowdfunding.