Research On The Effects Of Nonprofit's Perceptual Attributes On Individual Donors' Giving Behavior

The social function of nonprofit organizations and the large number of research fruits and data showed that nonprofit organizations have become more and more important in the construction of Chinese harmonious society. Lack of funds, however, has hampered their development. How to effectively obtain their development funds, especially how to attract individual donation has become one of the important issues and the new trend at present an in the future. Therefore, based on dimension of individual donor's perception, according to the empirical researches including pilot study (qualitative and quantitative research stage), questionnaire study (538 valid respondents for the actual and potential individual donors) and case study (based on China Charity Federation), this dissertation establishes the perception levels on the attributes of nonprofit organization and key perceptual dimensions of each level in the giving process, explores these the relationship model between these perceptual factors and individual giving behavior, and then reveals the intrinsic influencing mechanisms of the relationship model.Firstly, the results indicate the perception levels in the giving decision-making process for the individual donors, which are perception on the nonprofit and perception on its cause's attributes. And the former is mainly nonprofit brand equity and its three dimensions including brand personality, brand image and brand awareness; the latter is consist of cause benefit, cause importance, cause proximity, cause participation effort and congruency between cause and individual donor's value.Secondly, the empirical results reveal the relationship model between the two levels and eight dimensions of individual perception and individual giving behavior. It is the relationship model of three levels including the individual perception, giving intention and giving behavior. In this model, nonprofit brand equity and cause attributes are positively related to individual donor's giving intention significantly, and not significantly to their actual giving behavior, moreover the two variables have some interaction effects on influencing individual donor's giving intention and behavior. At the same time, individual donor's giving intention should impact the their actual giving behavior significantly, which shows in the individual giving process, giving intention may play the important role of "bridge" between individual perception and actual behavior decision-making.Lastly, on the one hand using the total sample to test the influencing role of self-concept, trust and commitment of individual level and organizational type of organizational level on the relationship model; on the other hand, dividing the total sample into four groups according to outside giving environment ( including giving cultural atmosphere and giving situation), and then we test the intrinsic influencing mechanisms of self-concept, trust and commitment on the relationship model under the each different giving environment, the results indicate (1) no matter which giving environment does the individual donor face, trust and commitment play the much more important role in influencing the relationship model; (2) under the different outside giving environment, there is some differences of the impact of self-concept on the relationship model.