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IMDS
121,7
1642
Received 6 September 2020
Revised 30 December 2020
4 March 2021
Accepted 9 April 2021
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 121 No. 7, 2021
pp. 1642-1663
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/IMDS-09-2020-0513
Understanding people’s
participation in online charities:
a dual-process approach of trust
and empathic concern
Hao Chen
School of Business, Qingdao University, Qingdao, China
Wenli Li
School of Economics and Management, Dalian University of Technology,
Dalian, China
Tu Lyu
School of Business, Qingdao University, Qingdao, China, and
Xunan Zheng
School of Economics and Management, Dalian University of Technology,
Dalian, China
Abstract
Purpose – The rapid development of the Internet in China has profoundly affected the country’s charities,
which many people support through online donations (e.g. providing financial help) and charity information
forwarding (a new behavior of participating in online charities via social media). However, the development of
online charities has been accompanied by many problems, such as donation fraud and fake charity information,
which adversely affect social kindness. The purpose of this paper is to understand people’s online donation and
forwarding behaviors and to explore the mechanisms of such behaviors from the perspectives of cognitive-
based trust and emotional-based empathic concern.
Design/methodology/approach – This study developed a research model based on the elaboration
likelihood model (ELM) and stimulus–organism–response (SOR) model. The researchers obtained 287 valid
samples via a scenario-based experimental survey and conducted partial least squares structural equation
modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the model.
Findings – The results indicated that (1) online donation intention is motivated by rational-based trust and
emotional-based empathic concern; (2) online charity information forwarding is triggered only when trust is
built, and there is no significant correlation between empathic concern and forwarding intention; and (3)
content quality, initiator credibility, and platform reputation are three critical paths to promote trust; in
addition, an individual’s empathic concern can be motivated by the emotional appeal.
Originality/value – This study highlights the different mechanisms of donation and forwarding behaviors
and provided theoretical measures for motiving trust and empathic concern in the online context to promote
people’s participation in online charity.
Keywords Online charity, Trust, Empathic concern, Donation, Forwarding, Elaboration likelihood model,
Stimulus–organism–response, Emotional appeal, Empirical study
Paper type Research paper
The authors greatly appreciate the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments
and constructive suggestions. Besides, this study is supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (No. 71874022); Social Science Planning Research Project of Shandong Province in
China (No. 20DGLJ02); and Science and Technology Plan of Youth Innovation Team in Colleges and
Universities of Shandong Province in China (No. 2019RWG031).
1. Introduction People’s
Information technology motivated charities to move from offline to online and ushered in a participation in
new era of “all-people participation” in the charity industry in China. Online donation and
charity information forwarding are the two main forms of participation. By giving monetary
online charities
and material donations, individuals can benefit old or disabled people, disaster relief,
education in remote areas, and protect animals and the environment. Official data show that
the accumulated total donations through the 20 official online donation platforms designated
by the Chinese ministry of civil affairs exceeded U3.71 bn in 2018 (people.cn, 2019). 1643
Forwarding charity information via social media is a new type of online charity participation.
Through social media, charity information can be spread to a wider group of people in a very
short time. Official data show that, in 2017, charity information was forwarded 199.66 m times
via Weibo, and such pieces of information were read over 36.81 bn times (Weibo Data
Center, 2018).
Online charity faces a crisis of trust. First, online charity scams take advantage of people’s
kindness and impair public trust. In China, charity scams accounted for U1 bn in donations in
2017, as millions of people were deceived (people.cn, 2018). Online charity scams are not
limited to China. An Australian commission received 941 reports of charity scams, with more
than $211,000 in reported losses in 2018. Of these scams, 10.3% were spread through social
networking and 5.6% through the Internet (Scamwatch, 2019). Recently, the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) in the United States warned people to be wary of potential charity fraud
using the coronavirus pandemic 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic as a pretext to steal money and
personal information (FBI NEWS, 2020).
Second, the public faces challenges in identifying the authenticity of charity information
and its sources, as a great deal of uncertainty is involved. On one hand, individuals have
become the main initiators of online charity. Such personal initiators may provide false
information that is not endorsed by any credible organization to mislead the public. A Chinese
man raised more than U2 m through the Internet for his daughter with leukemia, but news
revealed that he had deliberately concealed his financial status (People.cn, 2016). In another
case, an American dance teacher invented a story about a nine-year-old pupil dying from
cancer and asked for donations to pay for a dream trip (Selby, 2017). On the other hand, a
large number of platforms used to collect online donations makes it difficult for people to
determine which are reputable (Liu et al., 2018). It is also difficult for people to ensure that the
money that they donate will be used properly. Such abuse of funds severely overdraws public
confidence and trust in charity.
Finally, trust in charity projects is especially important for forwarding behavior. While
some people have forwarded charity messages without thinking, forwarding false
information has unfavorable consequences: more people will be cheated and suffer
financial losses, people who forward false information via social media will be regarded as
lacking in judgment, and their personal reputations will be negatively affected. Therefore,
rational individuals may carefully comprehend and evaluate information, and cautious
people only forward charity information that they confirm to be true and reliable
(Shi et al., 2018).
Trust is a critical determinant of offline donation decisions (Torres-Moraga et al., 2010;
Becker, 2018); however, we still know little about whether and how the trust can work in the
online charity donation and forwarding, especially focused on the individual initiated charity
activities. In addition, prior studies also provided certain design strategies, such as web page
and donation button design (Burt and Dunham, 2009; Burt and Gibbons, 2011), to promote
trust in developing online charity, however, such studies lack the attention to the core
elements of online charity, i.e. the characteristics of charity information, activities initiator
and charity platform. We still know little about how such characteristics work on building
IMDS trust and to motivate people to donate and forwarding. The first goal of this study is to fill
121,7 these research gaps.
In addition to trust, emotional elements are also worth considering in a charitable setting.
Empathic concern refers to a person responding to another person’s emotions in a given
situation without experiencing these emotions (Wieseke et al., 2012). It allows individuals to
express apprehensiveness for the welfare of others, resulting in altruistic behaviors (Farrelly
and Bennett, 2018). It is easier for people to donate to offline charity because the offline face-
1644 to-face charity activities can create a strong sense of presence, from which empathy can easily
arise (Verhaert and Poel, 2011). However, online charity information is often presented on a
website in the form of texts or pictures. Prior studies ignored to explore the connotative
emotional cues inside these texts or pictures, and there is a lack of understanding of how the
information displayed on a website can be used to stimulate people’s empathic concern. To fill
the research gaps, the second goal of this study is to explore the role of empathic concern in
online charity participation behaviors and the antecedent factors of empathic concern.
This study constructs a research model based on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM)
and stimulus–organism–response (SOR) model that captures the antecedents of trust and
empathic concern to understand individuals’ participation in online charity behaviors. It
contributes to the literature by identifying factors that are critical for building trust and
arousing empathic concern in an online charity context. Our study also improves
understanding of online charity by exploring the different mechanisms to motivate
donation and forwarding behaviors. Practically, this study illuminates useful strategies for
building trust and arousing emotions in online charity from web design and policy settings.

2. Literature review and theoretical background

2.1 Previous studies of charitable donation
In addition to a few studies focusing on donation actions like blood donation (Chen et al.,
2020), prior studies have mainly focused more on monetary donations than nonmonetary
donations in offline charity, and defined donation as a charitable giving behavior to
organizations or others beyond one’s own family (Bekkers and Wiepking, 2011a). Donation
behavior is influenced by intrinsic factors deriving from the fundamental human desire to
help others in need, such as responsibility (Lee and Chang, 2008), moral obligation (Knowles
et al., 2012) and emotions such as empathy, guilt and fear (Basil et al., 2008). Donation
behavior is also influenced by extrinsic factors like group identity (Charness and Holder,
2019), social identity (Wang et al., 2019), benefits or rewards from donating (Ye et al., 2015), or
reciprocity (Khadjavi, 2017; Zhang et al., 2020) and trust in charity organizations (Torres-
Moraga et al., 2010).
Online donation behavior studies found that personal impulsiveness (Bennett, 2009), the
perception of other people’s attitudes (Shier and Handy, 2012), the perceptions of the charity
project and charity organization (Reddick and Ponomariov, 2012) and Internet perceptions
(Sura et al., 2017) can motivate people to donate online. Besides, Lee and Park (2020) focused
on the influence of the visual and textual contents on donors’ participation and found sad
facial images of recipients did not increase potential donors’ participation, while observing a
small recipient in the images leads to a strong willingness to help. Similarly, Zhao and Yao
(2020) used the text mining method and found the characteristics of charity post creators (e.g.
NumModal, NumDayPost, NumFollow) that can predict people’s donation actions.
Based on the previous summary, we found that prior studies focused more on the offline
and online donation studies; however, few studies have been focused on people’s behaviors to
forward charity information. Forwarding charity information via social media is different
from the online donation, we know little about why and how do people forward charity
information, especially fake charity information is too much. Prior studies also worked on
discovering more motivation factors that motivate people to donate, and only a few studies People’s
highlighted the role of trust and emotion-related factors. Considering the online charity participation in
involves more complex and uncertain information, it requires a stronger base of trust, or else
people will refuse to participate because of the risk of fraud. Besides, empathic concern is an
online charities
emotional factor that can directly motivate donation. Except for Liu et al. (2018), few studies
have considered the cognitive and affective factors as a whole to understand the donation
actions in an online context. Thus, this paper studies the behavioral mechanisms of online
charity from cognitive (trust) and affective (empathic concern) perspectives to understand 1645
two types of online charity participation behaviors of donation and forwarding, and also tried
to explore antecedents to understand how to build trust and empathic concern.

2.2 Elaboration likelihood model (ELM)

The ELM argues that individuals take a process-oriented approach to explain how
persuasion occurs via two distinct routes: central route and peripheral route (Petty and
Cacioppo, 1986). When using the central route of information processing, individuals
critically consider all relevant arguments embedded in the information and scrutinize the
relative pros and cons of these arguments, elaborate on them and form judgments based on
these elaborations. Information recipients spend significant cognitive effort evaluating
information contents and assessing its validity to make judgments. When using the
peripheral route of information processing, people may spend little effort and rely on
accessible informational cues to conclude. Their attitude is primarily formed by the
association and inference of contextual shortcuts such as the endorser of an issue, rather than
the indigenous quality of the issue.
Information-related factors, such as argument quality, were categorized as the central cue
of information processing in previous studies (Bhattacherjee and Sanford, 2006; Zhou et al.,
2016). Similarly, donors also should take more efforts to identify the charity information,
therefore, the content quality of such information is an important reference. Content quality is
arranged as the central route cue in this study, which is defined as the degree to which an
individual believes that the information provided about an online charity project is accurate,
reliable and objective.
Source- and platform-related factors are treated as peripheral cues (Zhou et al., 2016; Shi et al.,
2018). Accordingly, initiator credibility and platform reputation are arranged as the peripheral
information cues in this study. Initiator credibility means that the identity of the initiator is real
and that the initiator will conduct the charity project as promised and will not use donations for
other purposes; while, platform reputation is defined as the extent to which people believe that a
platform is honest and concerned about its users. Such information cues send out some signals,
for example, the charity project initiator uses the ID information and qualification proof, or the
charity information is posted on a well-known charity website, offering donors the substitute or
supportive information for reference, and thus instead of judging the charity information itself.
The ELM holds that affect is a persuasive argument and a peripheral cue (Petty et al., 2015).
The affect heuristic mechanism suggested that affect can be worked as a heuristic device to help
people make a decision by simply asking themselves how they feel at that moment, which freeing
themselves from the lengthy and effortful cognitive processing described by the analytic mode of
decision making (Gwebu et al., 2014). In this study, the emotional appeal of a charity project
activates individuals’ peripheral route of information processing. Emotional appeals are
emotional descriptions or cues in a particular context. It attempts to stir up people’s positive
emotions (e.g. love and joy) or negative emotions (e.g. fear and guilt) to motivate a particular
behavior (Zhang et al., 2014). Charity projects generally contain certain emotional contents
implied in the texts or pictures, which can arouse emotional appeals and consequent charitable
actions (Verhaert and Poel, 2011; Farrelly and Bennett, 2018). Image or a photograph of a
IMDS seriously ill patient wrapped in bandages with a tube protruding from his or her head. The
121,7 emotional cues in such an image will work as an appeal to elicit strong feelings that touch people’s
hearts and then make him/her fall in empathy.

2.3 Stimulus–organism–response model (SOR)

SOR states that environmental cues (stimuli) can affect people’s cognitive or emotional
1646 reactions (reflecting the internal state of an organism), which directs their behavior (response)
(Mehrabian and Russell, 1974). The model delineates how the organism mediates the
relationship between the stimulus and response by postulating different mediating
mechanisms operating within the organism. The SOR model has been used in consumer
behavior studies in online commerce and IS/IT use (e.g. Chang, 2015; Xu et al., 2020; Wu and
Li, 2018).
Two reasons are provided to take SOR as a theoretical foundation for this study. First,
SOR centers on the organism’s reactions and the resulting behavioral responses when the
organism is exposed to various situation-specific environmental stimuli. As individuals’
decisions are malleable when situational stimuli are present, SOR gives us a better
understanding of how situation-specific reactions influence their decision-making. In this
study, ELM elements are the specific environmental stimuli, people need elaboration to
judgment the information sourcing from such elements, and then generate the cognitive
(trust) or emotional (empathic concern) reactions accordingly, after that, people make
decisions to participate in the charity project. Second, the model shows how the cognitive or
emotional reactions mediate the influence of special situational stimuli on behavioral
responses. Therefore, SOR helps to understand the mechanism of trust and empathic concern
for the ELM elements and final participation intentions.

3. Research hypotheses
This paper builds a research model based on ELM and SOR to explore the mechanisms of
donation and forwarding behaviors in online charity. Figure 1 presents our research model.

Stimuli Organism Response

Central Content
Route Quality
H2

Participation
Initiator H3
Trust Behaviors
Credibility H1a
Informational H4 Donation
Peripheral
H1b Intention
Route
Platform
Reputation
H5a Forwarding
Intention
Emotional H6
Figure 1. Peripheral
Emotional Empathic H5b
The research model Appeal Concern
Route
3.1 Trust and participation People’s
Trust reflects whether the project is trustworthy (Li et al., 2018). In this study, it captures a participation in
belief that the project initiator and charity platform will fulfill the promised plan and
obligations described in the project proposal. Information about online charity is complex and
online charities
uncertain, and a feeling of trust improves individuals’ ability to make informed judgments (to
avoid scams) and increases their willingness to participate in online activities (Hajli et al.,
2017; Liang et al., 2019). We propose that:
1647
H1a. Trust has a positive effect on donation intention.
People’s forwarding behavior greatly facilitates the spread of charity information (Suh et al.,
2010). However, two serious consequences may result when people forward false information
to their social groups. First, more people are at risk of losing money as relatives and friends
are misled to donate. Second, the person who forwards false information will be seen as
lacking in judgment, and their personal reputations will decline. In this sense, information
filtering is critical, as people only forward charity information that they trust. Thus, we
hypothesize that:
H1b. Trust has a positive effect on forwarding intention.

3.2 ELM central route and trust

High-quality content uses a more comprehensively, objectively and clear description to detail
the information about the project goals, plans and verification from authoritative institutions,
enabling donors to effectively judge the trustworthiness of the project (Kwak et al., 2018).
Many studies have confirmed that the higher the quality of information, the stronger the
individual’s trust (Kim and Park, 2013; Zhou et al., 2016). We proposed that:
H2. Content quality has a positive effect on trust.

3.3 ELM peripheral route and trust

The authentication of the identity of the personal initiator and the qualifications of the
organization affect individuals’ perceptions of the initiator’s credibility. The project initiator
is the source of the project information. Studies have shown that the credibility of the
information source directly affects the formation of or change in the information recipient’s
attitude (Bhattacherjee and Sanford, 2006; Cheung et al., 2009). Information provided by
highly credible sources has a greater effect on trust (Zhou et al., 2016). For a personal initiator,
personal identification information such as an ID number can prove the authenticity of the
identity and dispel people’s doubts to some extent. For an organizational initiator, showing a
qualification audit from a third-party certifier and presenting successful past project
experiences are good ways to establish credibility. A project initiated by a credible initiator is
more likely to gain people’s trust. Therefore, we proposed that:
H3. Initiator credibility has a positive effect on trust.
Studies have demonstrated a close relationship between platforms’ reputation and donors’
trust (Koufaris and Hampton-Sosa, 2004; Shier and Handy, 2012). The good reputation of an
online charity platform sends the following positive signals: first, commitment to the open
and reasonable circulation of donations so that all of the money is used for applicants’ benefit,
with no money deducted or retained, and second, that donors can avoid fraudulent donation
and payment security risks. In this regard, people are likely to consider the reputation of a
charity platform to be an important factor in evaluating trust. We proposed that:
H4. Platform reputation has a positive effect on trust.
IMDS 3.4 Empathic concern and participation
121,7 High empathic concern is associated with a greater tendency to contribute time or money to
help others (FeldmanHall et al., 2015; Verhaert and Poel, 2011; Farrelly and Bennett, 2018).
People who empathize with those in need will have a selfless altruistic motivation to help
them overcome difficulties (Batson et al., 2015). Thus, people with empathic concern are likely
to donate money. Besides, in the online context, forwarding charity information is also an
altruistic behavior because it is an efficient way to spread information and to get more people
1648 to participate in donation activities. Thus, we believe that individuals who have empathic
concern for others are willing to help by forwarding charity information on social media (e.g.
Weibo, Facebook). Therefore, we proposed that:
H5a. Empathic concern has a positive effect on donation intention.
H5b. Empathic concern has a positive effect on forwarding intention.

3.5 ELM peripheral route and empathic concern

Emotional appeal is a widely used strategy in advertising (Ruiz and Sicilia, 2004), which
makes customers feel good about a product and relies on feelings to make a purchasing
decision (Wu and Wang, 2011). In the context of online charity, information about a charity
project typically contains many emotional appeals expressed in pictures or emotion-laden
language. For instance, antichild abuse ads exhibit an image that a boy was abused by
domestic violence. People who saw this public service ad may feel grieved and angry, and
then such negative emotional appeal will arouse people’s response of empathy and
subsequent intention to help (Bagozzi and Moore, 1994). Similarly, people may also generate
emotional appeals when reading charity information, and then sympathize with the
sufferings of an individual who needs help. Such emotional appeal signals an emotional
motivation to understand others in an empathetic light. Therefore, we hypothesize the
following:
H6. Emotional appeal has a positive effect on empathic concern.

4. Methodology
4.1 Survey design
This study employed a scenario-based experimental survey to mimic a realistic scenario to
solicit respondents’ perceptions of the variables used in this study. This method helps
researchers to exclude respondents’ memory bias, individual differences and personal
circumstances concerning the research context (Grewal et al., 2008). Our study chose medical
assistance as an experimental scenario. To ensure the authenticity of the scenario and
enhance respondents’ sense of involvement, we randomly selected a real medical assistance
case in Shuidichou (www.shuidichou.cn), one of the officially recognized charity websites in
China. Respondents were asked to read the scenario materials used in this experiment and
imagine that they are faced with the situation of online charity. Then they complete the online
survey. Scenario information can be seen in Appendix 1.

4.2 Measurement development

To develop the measurement scale items, we adapted previously validated scales to fit the
context of this study. All of the constructs were measured using multi-item perceptual
five-point Likert scales. Items and sources for each construct are listed in Appendix 2.
Based on prior studies (Bekkers and Wiepking, 2011b; Shier and Handy, 2012),
demographic characteristics such as sex, age, education and past experiences are
considered as control variables. Besides, ability affects an individual’s willingness to act People’s
(Siemsen et al., 2008). In this study, individuals’ behaviors require money, time and related participation in
knowledge or skills. Hence, we set self-efficacy, which refers to confidence or belief in
one’s own ability to execute certain actions (Li, 2019), as a control variable.
online charities

4.3 Respondents and procedures

Respondents in this survey were selected randomly, and they were instructed to complete the 1649
questionnaire only if they had prior experience and abilities to handle online charity related
activities, including certain economic basis (for donation) and social media usage (for
forwarding). Those people who have no or very little prior experience to donate or forward
through online charity are participants in the investigation. Our scenario design can help
those people to understand the survey and strengthen their involvement. Those respondents
who have experiences of donation or forwarding in online charity platforms before were
asked to re-examine and evaluate their feelings and behaviors under our research scenario.
Thus, their decisions relied on the present online charity experiences to some extent rather
than past experiences.
We conducted a two-round pilot test to ensure the readability and validity of the
measurement. First, we invited two professors and four PhD students to confirm the validity
of the measurement items and to identify any confusing points. After that, we made minor
changes to the scales. We then obtained 90 useable responses from the randomly invited
MBA students as the respondents to test the revised scales. Based on the feedback, no items
were dropped, and the wording of individual measurement items was slightly modified.
To make the full survey cover a wide range of the population, we hired a professional and
well-known online survey firm to distribute questionnaires randomly. It has been shown that
data coming from such online survey firms are reliable and acceptable in the information
system (IS) discipline (D’Arcy and Lowry, 2017; Hua et al., 2018). Data were collected from
users of online charity platforms and social media channels with donation functions. The
responses were scrutinized, and invalid responses, including those with the same answer to
all questions, those with missing responses and those that answered the test question
incorrectly, were discarded. Ultimately, we obtained 287 valid responses from 330 completed
surveys. The demographic characteristics of the respondents can be seen in Table 1.

5. Data analysis and results

Participation in online charity is still a largely unexplored or under-explored research area,
and this research is also theoretically developmental in nature. Therefore, partial least
squares (PLS) is well-suited because it suits for studies in the early stage of theory building
and testing (Hair et al., 2018).

5.1 Measurement model test

The composite reliability (CR) values were calculated to assess the reliability of the latent
variables. In Table 2, the CR values of all of the constructs in the model exceeded 0.7 (Chin
et al., 2003), showing that the data have good reliability. The following criteria (Fornell and
Larcker, 1981; Chin et al., 2003) were adapted to measure convergent validity: (1) most
indicator factor loadings should be significant and ideally at least 0.7; (2) the average variance
extracted (AVE) by each construct should exceed 0.5. Results showed in Tables 2 and 3
suggested a good convergent validity.
We performed two steps to test discriminant validity. First, the items had high loadings on
their corresponding constructs (Table 3). Second, the square roots of the AVEs for all of the
constructs were greater than their correlations with the other constructs (Table 2).
IMDS Category Subcategory Count Percentage (%)
121,7
N 5 287
Sex Male 136 47.39
Female 151 52.61
Age <20 21 7.32
21–30 223 77.70
1650 31–40 27 9.41
>40 16 5.57
Education High school 28 10.45
Undergraduate 184 64.11
Graduate 73 25.44
Monthly income (U) <1,000 32 11.15
1,000–3,000 145 50.52
3,000–8,000 93 32.40
8,000–15,000 14 4.88
>15,000 3 1.05
Length of knowing online charity (year) <1 83 28.92
1–3 110 38.33
>3 94 32.75
Donation experience Yes 246 85.71
No 41 14.29
N 5 246
Donation amount (U) <10 59 23.98
10–50 114 46.34
50–100 47 19.11
100–500 19 7.72
>500 7 2.85
Project type Educational aid 39 15.85
Medical assistance 133 54.07
Poverty alleviation 40 16.26
Caring for the elderly 12 4.88
Environmental protection 12 4.88
Animal protection 5 2.03
Other 5 2.03
Table 1. Reason for donation Help others 228 92.68
Demographic Self-consolation 9 3.66
characteristics of the Conformity 3 1.22
sample Other 6 2.44

Mean SD AVE CR 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

CQ 3.79 0.721 0.661 0.853 0.813

DI 3.72 0.788 0.659 0.853 0.332 0.812
EA 3.82 0.805 0.701 0.875 0.604 0.346 0.837
EC 3.78 0.786 0.716 0.835 0.229 0.299 0.305 0.846
FI 3.58 0.892 0.784 0.916 0.401 0.547 0.465 0.311 0.885
IC 3.79 0.786 0.718 0.884 0.638 0.286 0.545 0.231 0.316 0.847
Table 2. PR 3.72 0.766 0.695 0.872 0.543 0.429 0.476 0.219 0.523 0.513 0.834
Correlations between TR 3.70 0.766 0.687 0.868 0.652 0.481 0.638 0.257 0.538 0.653 0.644 0.829
latent constructs Note(s): The italics entries show the square root of the AVE values
Additionally, the Heterotrait-Monotrait ratio (HTMT) was also used to assess discriminant People’s
validity (Table 4). All of the HTMT values were lower than 0.85 (Kline, 2015). Thus, all of the participation in
evidence indicates that the discriminant validity of the constructs is reasonable.
We tested multicollinearity using the variance inflation factor (VIF). Results show that the
online charities
VIFs for each construct are in a range of 1.230–2.481, indicating that multicollinearity is not a
serious problem. We also followed Liang et al. (2007) to test whether common method bias
(CMB) exists. Results demonstrated that the average variance explained by the indicators
was 0.698, which is much higher than the average method-based variance of 0.007. Moreover, 1651
most of the loadings of the latent method construct were not significant. Thus, CMB is
unlikely to be considered.

5.2 Hypothesis testing

We examined the path coefficients and associated t-values of the paths in the structural
model. Based on the results shown in Figure 2 and Table 5, all the hypotheses were supported

CQ DI EA EC FI IC PR TR

CQ1 0.839 0.251 0.540 0.205 0.371 0.569 0.478 0.538

CQ2 0.874 0.337 0.552 0.227 0.394 0.555 0.490 0.609
CQ3 0.717 0.206 0.357 0.108 0.179 0.420 0.339 0.422
DI1 0.352 0.793 0.330 0.266 0.435 0.311 0.410 0.470
DI2 0.211 0.813 0.201 0.243 0.446 0.161 0.311 0.341
DI3 0.240 0.829 0.304 0.216 0.449 0.221 0.317 0.353
EA1 0.527 0.278 0.826 0.262 0.398 0.450 0.443 0.549
EA2 0.481 0.234 0.825 0.221 0.390 0.417 0.364 0.475
EA3 0.507 0.339 0.860 0.277 0.381 0.496 0.387 0.568
EC1 0.173 0.232 0.249 0.834 0.264 0.194 0.183 0.214
EC2 0.212 0.272 0.267 0.859 0.263 0.198 0.189 0.222
FI1 0.313 0.489 0.389 0.328 0.878 0.257 0.459 0.444
FI2 0.362 0.505 0.427 0.213 0.880 0.283 0.461 0.524
FI3 0.386 0.456 0.417 0.292 0.899 0.299 0.467 0.456
IC1 0.612 0.234 0.483 0.217 0.260 0.881 0.448 0.571
IC2 0.526 0.204 0.417 0.207 0.245 0.841 0.428 0.521
IC3 0.484 0.286 0.483 0.165 0.298 0.819 0.426 0.565
PR1 0.463 0.366 0.347 0.187 0.471 0.447 0.862 0.570
PR2 0.432 0.323 0.376 0.144 0.355 0.414 0.769 0.426
PR3 0.465 0.379 0.467 0.210 0.466 0.425 0.865 0.594
TR1 0.612 0.427 0.562 0.221 0.452 0.607 0.577 0.863
TR2 0.488 0.424 0.501 0.249 0.469 0.502 0.527 0.816 Table 3.
TR3 0.516 0.339 0.523 0.166 0.416 0.509 0.495 0.807 Cross-loadings

CQ DI EA EC FI IC PR TR

CQ –
DI 0.436
EA 0.775 0.443
EC 0.329 0.443 0.438
FI 0.483 0.682 0.563 0.434
IC 0.684 0.367 0.680 0.333 0.379 Table 4.
PR 0.704 0.558 0.604 0.314 0.329 0.506 Heterotrait–Monotrait
TR 0.814 0.629 0.813 0.375 0.356 0.825 0.815 – ratio (HTMT)
IMDS Content
121,7 Quality 0.273***

Participation
Initiator 0.304*** Trust
0.261*** Behaviors
Credibility R 2 = 59.6%
Donation Control Variables
Intention
1652 Platform 0.340*** 0.308*** R 2 = 41.0% Age(–0.126*/–0.087*)
Sex(–0.086/0.036)
Reputation Education(–0.028/–0.126**)
0.124* Forwarding Donation Experience(–0.187***/–0.046)
Intention Self-efficacy(0.303***/0.353***)
Empathic R 2 = 44.2%
Emotional 0.305*** 0.108
Concern
Appeal
R 2 = 9.3%

Figure 2. Note(s)：*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001; the dashed line represents non-significant
Hypothesis testing
results
path; control variable (N1/N2), N1represents the coefficient with Donation intention and
N2 represents the coefficient with Forwarding intention

Causal chain Coefficient t-stat p Conclusion

H1a: Trust → Donation intention 0.261 4.341 *** Supported

H1b: Trust → Forwarding intention 0.308 5.347 *** Supported
H2: Content quality → Trust 0.273 4.521 *** Supported
H3: Initiator credibility → Trust 0.304 5.404 *** Supported
H4: Platform reputation → Trust 0.340 5.743 *** Supported
H5a: Empathic concern → Donation intention 0.124 2.394 * Supported
H5b: Empathic concern → Forwarding intention 0.108 1.944 Unsupported
H6: Emotional appeal → Empathic concern 0.305 5.535 *** Supported
Control variables
Age → Donation intention 0.126 2.525 * Supported
Age → Forwarding intention 0.087 2.204 * Supported
Sex → Donation intention 0.086 1.815 Unsupported
Sex → Forwarding intention 0.036 0.796 Unsupported
Edu → Donation intention 0.028 0.504 Unsupported
Edu → Forwarding intention 0.126 2.796 ** Supported
Donation experience → Donation intention 0.187 3.562 *** Supported
Table 5. Donation experience → Forwarding intention 0.046 0.876 Unsupported
The summary of the Self-efficacy → Donation intention 0.303 4.873 *** Supported
hypothesis testing Self-efficacy → Forwarding intention 0.353 5.648 *** Supported
results Note(s): ***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.1

except H5b. The R2 value for donation intention is 41.0% and that for forwarding intention is
44.2%, for trust is 59.6% and that for empathic concern is 9.3%. Besides, age was negatively
related to donation and forwarding intentions, indicating that young people were more likely
to donate and forward than elderly people. The negative correlation between education and
forwarding intention indicated that people with higher education were more cautious about
forwarding. Donation experience had a negative effect on donation intention, indicating that
online donation may be a one-off trait. Self-efficacy positively affected donation and
forwarding intentions.
5.3 Individual’s dynamic transition behavior in online charity participation People’s
We drew a parallel coordinates plot in Figure 3 to understand the dynamic transition of participation in
people within donation and forwarding behaviors. A line is drawn connecting the mean
values for observations for two participation behaviors (each different axis) creating a
online charities
multivariate profile. These lines present a personalized opinion change between the donation
and forwarding behavior intentions. The line thickness with an adjacent number reflects how
many people take the same opinion change path. In general, we may think donation and
forwarding actions are two independent events, people who donate do not necessarily 1653
forward the charity messages and vice versa. The parallel coordinates plot shows some
underlying patterns in the connection between these two types of participation behaviors. In
total, 78.05% of people (donation mean values > 3) show a relatively high intention to donate
online, and 76.31% of people (forwarding mean values > 3) show a relatively high intention to
forward charity information. From the perspective of donation intention (from left to right

Figure 3.
Parallel coordinates
plot of the dynamic
changes of individual’s
participation
IMDS line direction in Figure 3), people who have a strong donation willingness often show two
121,7 kinds of choose path (it can be seen on the thickness of trend line) of their forwarding
intention: one group of strong donation willingness people (mean values range in 3.67–4.33)
showed higher forwarding will (with upward connections between donation and forwarding
intentions); another group of people with a slightly stronger intention to donate (3 < mean
values ≤ 4) tend to be neutral in their willingness to forward. From the perspective of the
behavioral intention of forwarders (looking at the trend of lines from right to left in Figure 3),
1654 people with a high forwarding intention (mean values > 3) tend to show a high donation
intention.

6. Discussion and implications

6.1 Key findings
Based on ELM and SOR, this paper presents a dual-process model based on cognitive-based
trust and emotional-based empathic concern to understand people’s donation and forwarding
behaviors in online charity. Here, we discuss several findings.
First, both trust and empathic concern play powerful roles in determining people’s
donation intention. Trust in a charity project is the result of a person’s cognitive appraisals
and empathic concern is an emotional feeling toward the project. The process of making
donation decisions is found to be a dual-path process in which both cognition and emotion
play roles. This result is consistent with Liu et al. (2018), who found that empathy and
perceived credibility enhance individuals’ intention to donate.
Second, trust affects individuals’ intention to forward charity information, but no
significant correlation between empathic concern and forwarding intention. A possible
reason is that people try to protect their friends and relatives from the risk of monetary loss,
and they, therefore, do not forward information before confirming that it is trustworthy.
Another possible reason is that if people forward fake charity information, they will be seen
as lacking in wisdom and even ignorant, which will negatively affect their social image. Our
study provides new knowledge that identifies the different mechanisms of trust and empathic
concern on forwarding willingness, and the results confirmed that people are more cautious
and rational regarding forwarding than regarding donating.
Third, this study provides evidence for the positive effects of content quality, initiator
credibility and platform reputation on trust and of emotional appeal on empathic concern.
These findings provide new knowledge on how to build trust and arouse empathic concern in
online charity. It is noteworthy that among antecedents of trust, the path of platform
reputation to trust is slightly stronger than those of content quality and initiator credibility.
The reason may be that a platform’s reputation is built over a long period of time by the
authenticity of information about various charity projects and the completion of previous
projects. When the quality of the project content and the credibility of the project initiator are
based on a single project, the value that can be reflected is limited. Based on the past
performance of the charity platform, people can preliminarily infer whether the project on the
platform is trustworthy and form an initial level of trust. People then take the specific content
of the charity project and the initiator’s information as auxiliary information to make a
comprehensive evaluation of the project and finally to form a comprehensive level of trust.

6.2 Theoretical contributions

First, most studies in the charity literature focused on drivers of donation, but our study is
among the first to consider forwarding in online charity. Moreover, our study contributes to
the literature by demonstrating different mechanisms of the trust-based cognitive path and
the empathic concern-focused emotional path on donation and forwarding. This study
revealed that individuals’ online donation behavior is a dual-process decision-making: the People’s
cognitive and emotional paths coexist in shaping online donation behavior; this conclusion is participation in
as same as Liu et al. (2018). In contrast, we found the new knowledge that individuals’
forwarding behavior is purely rational: only arousing individuals’ emotions will not result in
online charities
the spread of charity information to more people or promote an online charity project. Our
research thus provides insight regarding the factors that induce individuals to donate and
forward charity information. In addition, this study also revealed the potential relationship
between the two types of participating behaviors, donation and forwarding, through the 1655
parallel coordinate plot, so as to provide support for further discussion on the law of behavior
transformation.
Second, different prior studies focused on cognitive factors, such as personal moral
identity (Lee et al., 2014) or the perceptions of information content quality (Liu et al., 2018), to
understand an individual’s empathy concern, we involved emotional appeal to explore how
emotional cue hidden in charity text or pictures motivate individual’s empathy concern in the
online charity. Based on the ELM, we theorized such emotional cue as the core element of the
emotional peripheral route. Research conclusion displayed that emotional appeal positively
impacted on empathy concern; thus, this new finding calls for us to pay more attention to and
explore the role of emotional cues.
Third, project content quality, initiator credibility and platform reputation are the three
key attributes of a charity project, and this research quantifies their influence on individuals’
trust. Liang et al. (2019) only focused on the effects of project and initiator characteristics on
trust and did not consider platform characteristics; Liu et al. (2018) explored the positive roles
of technological and project characteristics on trust. Based on prior studies, our study added a
new variable named website platform reputation. Our study advances the literature by
comprehensively clarifying the formation of online trust. A charity project with high-quality
content and a credible initiator launched on a reputable platform is best able to gain
individuals’ trust. Besides, we introduced central route factor, i.e. content quality and
informational peripheral route factors, i.e. initiator credibility and platform reputation, to
deconstruct the ELM. Results suggested that people’s trust in online charity depends more on
the judgment of platform reputation and initiator credibility (peripheral route variables), then
on the content quality (central route variable). This conclusion is different from Liu et al.
(2018), and they found that project content quality is the most important consideration to
arouse perceived credibility. This conclusion was drawn in the charity context of medical
assistance, and our finding may be specific to the context of the study, thus it calls for a future
discussion about the other charity scenarios.

6.3 Practical implications

From the trust management perspective, we highlighted the role of project content quality,
initiator credibility and platform reputation to elicit trust. To enhance the quality of content,
charity platform operators can set policies to ensure that initiators provide accurate, reliable
and objective information about projects. The platform could also set up a blacklist system to
prevent an initiator who posted fake information from launching new projects. Besides, the
charity platform could cooperate with the government and third-party credit reporting
agencies to establish a credit evaluation system to ensure that project initiators are credible.
The platform could also cooperate with social media to comprehensively supervise initiators.
Moreover, we call platform operators’ attention to platform reputation. Operators could use
reputation management tools to monitor and analyze comments related to the platform.
From the charity project management perspective, it is useful for initiators to improve
their descriptions of their charity projects. Improving the layout of text and photographs on
the website has practical value. An emotional atmosphere can be created by placing
IMDS emotionally attractive photographs in a prominent position, as appropriate emotional
121,7 rendering can arouse people’s kindness and empathy and then promote donation.
At last, our study has implications regarding people forwarding charity information on
social networks. Online charity platforms should establish multiple social media interfaces
for charity projects and design text, pictures, links and other methods to encourage people to
forward in various scenarios. We suggest that charity platforms work with social media to
provide information screening and track feedback mechanisms to help people judge the
1656 authenticity of charity information and follow-up donation progress. Such mechanisms will
promote people’s forwarding behavior and the development of online charity.

7. Limitations and future research

First, this study used a single case of medical assistance. Future studies can extend our
research model to other charity donation modes, such as environmental protection, animal
protection or relief for out-of-school children, to find different motivations for participation in
different charity projects. Besides, we find three cross-loadings larger than 0.6, although the
loadings of these latent variables on their respective factors are higher. Future research can
introduce more scenarios to design measurement items to obtain more reasonable data sets.
Second, we did not incorporate actual donation and forwarding behaviors. Objective data,
such as the actual number of donations and the number of forwarding messages, would be
useful to verify and build on our findings. Furthermore, our data were gathered in China. We
encourage researchers to collect data outside of China to build on our results cross-culturally.
Particular care should be taken when generalizing our results to other cultural contexts, as
other factors may influence people’s participation behavior, and the formation of trust and
empathic concern may be different.
Third, according to the social influence theory, individuals’ emotions, opinions and
behaviors are influenced by others. Two basic needs lead people to follow the opinions,
behavior and expectations of others: the need to be right (informational social influence) and
the need to be liked (normative social influence). However, we did not explore how donation
and forwarding behaviors are influenced by peers (e.g. peer influence), social press (e.g.
subjective norm), self-press (e.g. moral norm or social responsibility). Future research can
extend the established view of online charity from a social influence perspective.

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Appendix 1 People’s
Experimental scenario
We exhibited the scenario of medical assistance used in this study. (Note: initiator information is participation in
scattered shown in multiple screenshots. In addition to image 1, the text descriptions of the charity online charities
project contain more information about the initiator, including the (mother–child) relationship between
initiator and patient (image 2); the third party like the bank also provides certification for the initiator
(image 4)).
1661
IMDS Appendix 2
121,7

Content quality adapted from Kim and Park (2013)

CQ1 The text or picture description of this charity project is accurate
CQ2 The text or picture description of this charity project is reliable
1662 CQ3 The text or picture description of this charity project is objective
Initiator credibility self-developed items
IC1 The charity project initiator provides reliable identity information
IC2 The charity project initiator provides true identity information
IC3 The charity project initiator is credible
Platform reputation adapted from Kim and Park (2013)
PR1 This platform works well technically
PR2 This platform is well known
PR3 This platform has a good reputation
Emotional appeal self-developed items
EA1 The text or picture description of this charity project can touch my heart
EA2 The text or picture description of this charity project can affect my emotions
EA3 The text or picture description of this charity project can stir up my feelings
Trust adapted from Liang et al. (2019)
TR1 This charity project is trustworthy
TR2 This charity project will be executed in strict accordance with the promise
TR3 I believe the information that this charity project provides me
Empathic concern adapted from Zhao et al. (2019)
After reading the scenario materials, to what extent do you feel the following emotions
EC1 Sympathetic
EC2 Compassionate
Donation intention adapted from Liu et al. (2018)
DI1 The probability that I would donate money to this online charity project is high
DI2 My willingness to donate money to this online charity project is high
DI3 The likelihood of my donating money to this online charity project is high
Forwarding intention adapted from Lee and Ma (2012)
FI1 I am willing to forward this charity information to others
Table A1. FI2 I am willing to spread this charity information through the internet to let more people know
Questionnaire items FI3 I intend to share this charity information on social media in the future

About the authors

Hao Chen is an associate professor at School of Business, Qingdao University, China. He received his
PhD in Faculty of Management and Economics at Dalian University of Technology in Dalian, China. He
was invited as a visiting PhD student to DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Canada in
2017. His research focuses on social commerce and user behavior, information security management,
privacy and trust. His work has appeared in several conferences on information systems, such as Pacific
Asia Conference on Information Systems, and journals such as Information and Management, Journal of
Enterprise Information Management, Information Technology and People, Behaviour and Information
Technology, Information and Computer Security.
Wenli Li is a professor at the School of Economics and Management, Dalian University of
Technology. Dr. Li’s research interests focus on social commerce and trust management. His work
appeared in several conferences on information systems, such as International Conference on
Information Systems and Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems, and journals such as
European Journal of Operational Research, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications and
Information and Computer Security. Wenli Li is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: wlli@ People’s
dlut.edu.cn
Tu Lyu is an associate professor at School of Business, Qingdao University, China. She received her participation in
PhD in Faculty of Management and Economics at Dalian University of Technology in Dalian, China. She online charities
was invited as a visiting scholar to Accounting and Finance Department Business School, University of
Greenwich, UK in 2020. Her research focuses on social commerce and user behavior, innovation and
entrepreneurial management.
Xunan Zheng is a postgraduate student at the School of Economics and Management at Dalian 1663
University of Technology in Dalian, China. Her research focuses on online charity behaviors.

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