Influences of Medical Crowdfunding Website Design Features on Trust and Intention to Donate: Controlled Laboratory Experiment (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND As a type of donation-based crowdfunding, medical crowdfunding has gradually become an important way for patients who have difficulty paying medical bills to seek help from the public. However, many people still have limited confidence in donating money to medical crowdfunding projects. OBJECTIVE Given that the features of a medical crowdfunding website may be important to users’ trust, this study draws upon two-factor and trust theories to explore how different design features of medical crowdfunding websites affect potential donors’ cognition-based trust and affect-based trust, and how these types of trust affect intention to donate. METHODS A 2 (informativeness: high vs. low) × 2 (visual cues: cool color vs. warm color) × 2 (social cues: with vs. without) between-subject laboratory experiment was conducted to validate our research model. A total of 320 undergraduate students recruited from a university in China participated in the controlled laboratory experiment. RESULTS Results indicate that cognition-and affect-based trust exert significant effects on the intention to donate of potential donors of medical crowdfunding. Informativeness as a hygiene factor positively influences potential donors’ cognition- and affect-based trust, whereas social cues as a motivating factor significantly influence potential donors’ cognition- and affect-based trust. However, webpages’ color affects the two dimensions of trust differently. Specifically, medical crowdfunding webpages with warm color are more likely to induce affect-based trust than cool color, whereas no significant difference exists between the effects of cold and warm colors on cognition-based trust. CONCLUSIONS This study deepens our understanding of the relationship among the design features of medical crowdfunding websites, trust, and intention to donate and provides guidelines for managers of medical crowdfunding platforms to enhance potential donors’ trust building by improving the website design features.