The Influence Of Facial Expressions And Relationships Between Donor And Beneficiary On College Students’ Charity Crowdfunding Donations

Charity crowdfunding is an emerging form of charity donation in China.It comes into being under the background of the Internet and takes social media as the communication platform.Compared with the traditional form of charity donation,charity crowdfunding has a faster communication speed and a wider range of communication.Charity crowdfunding in the form of pictures,texts,video and other forms can make donors have a more intuitive experience.Among them,the picture as a major stimulus witnessed by donors,and social software as a major platform,these two aspects have a certain impact on the effect of charitable crowdfunding.The discussion on how the facial expressions of the patients in the crowdfunding pictures and the relationship between the beneficiaries and the donors affect the donation behavior is significant in promoting the effect of crowdfunding.Taking college students as subjects,this study explored the influence of facial expressions of beneficiaries at different ages and donor-beneficiary relationship on charitable crowd-funding donation behavior through three experiments.Experiment 1 explored the influence of facial expressions of beneficiary children and donor-beneficiary relationship on charitable crowd-funding donation behavior.Forty-nine subjects were studied,using a 2 x 2 experimental design.The independent variables are: facial expressions of the benefited children(happy and sad),donorbeneficiary relationship(published by acquaintances and strangers),and the dependent variables are the amount of donation and the willingness to share.Sixteen crowdfunding cases were randomly presented to the subjects through a computer,and the subjects were required to respond to the donation amount and willingness to share in each case.The results showed that the main effect of the facial expressions of the benefited children was not significant,the main effect of the donor-beneficiary relationship was significant,and the interaction between the facial expressions of the benefited children and the donor-beneficiary relationship was not significant.Experiment 2 explored the influence of facial expressions of beneficiary youth and donor-beneficiary relationship on charitable crowd-funding donation behavior.Forty-six subjects were studied using the same experimental procedure as in experiment 1.The results showed that the main effect of facial expression was significant,the main effect of donor-beneficiary relationship was significant,and the interaction between facial expression and donor-beneficiary relationship was significant.Experiment 3 explored the effect of facial expressions of elderly beneficiaries and donor-beneficiary relationship on charitable crowdfunding donation behavior.Forty subjects were studied using the same experimental procedure as in experiment 1.The results showed that facial expressions of the elderly beneficiaries had a significant effect on the amount of donation,but no significant effect on the willingness to share,significant effect on the donor-beneficiary relationship,and significant interaction between facial expressions and donor-beneficiary relationship on the amount of donation,but no significant interaction on the willingness to share.To sum up,the main conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)college students who make charitable crowdfunding donations will not be affected by the facial expressions of the child beneficiaries,but will be affected by the facial expressions of the young and elderly beneficiaries;(2)the donor-beneficiary relationship affects donations to beneficiaries in three age groups;(3)the facial expressions of young and old beneficiaries interact with donorbeneficiary relationships;(4)subjects’ willingness to share charity crowdfunding information was only affected by the facial expressions of young people;(5)donors are more willing to share crowd-funding information of beneficiaries they are related to.