Success Factors of Medical Crowdfunding Campaigns: Systematic Review

Abstract

Background Medical crowdfunding provides opportunities for individuals who lack financial resources to access the health services that they need. Despite the popularity of medical crowdfunding, the current understanding of the success of medical crowdfunding campaigns is fragmented and inadequate. Objective We aimed to comprehensively investigate which factors lead to the success of medical crowdfunding campaigns. Methods A search was conducted in PubMed, PsycINFO, Web of Science, ACM Digital Library, and ScienceDirect from 2010 to June 2020. Papers directly and indirectly related to the success of medical crowdfunding campaigns were included. Two reviewers independently extracted information on the success of medical crowdfunding campaigns. Results Our search yielded 441 articles, of which 13 met the inclusion criteria. Medical crowdfunding is increasingly attracting academic attention, and most studies leverage text analysis as their research methods; however, there is a lack of consensus on the definition of medical crowdfunding among researchers. Four categories of factors that affect the success of medical crowdfunding were identified: platforms, raisers, donors, and campaigns. Conclusions Although some limitations exist in our systematic review, our study captured and mapped literatures of the success of medical crowdfunding campaigns systematically, which can be used as the basis for future research on this topic.

The more the better? The negative effect of disseminators' donations in online donation

“…Especially in online donation for health, only 10% of projects reach their targets (X. Hou et al, 2022).…”

“…The second category includes initiator factors, such as demographic characteristics (X. Hou et al, 2022), social networks (Castillo et al, 2014;Jiao et al, 2021;Liu et al, 2022), stakeholder support and individual prestige (X. Hou et al, 2022).…”

“…Hou et al, 2022), social networks (Castillo et al, 2014;Jiao et al, 2021;Liu et al, 2022), stakeholder support and individual prestige (X. Hou et al, 2022). The final category includes donor factors, such as motivations (Bagheri et al, 2019;List et al, 2021), power (Winterich & Zhang, 2014), personal values (Sneddon et al, 2020), similarity in donor-donor dyads (Tian & Konrath, 2021) or donor-beneficiary dyads (Chapman et al, 2022), and the effects of others' donation behavior (Klinowski, 2021;Mukherjee et al, 2020;Sasaki, 2019;Teunenbroek et al, 2019).…”

“…Online donation has contributed many resources to nonprofit organizations and individuals, but the task of raising sufficient money for projects is not simple, with an average success rate of 13%–20% (Belleflamme et al, 2013). Especially in online donation for health, only 10% of projects reach their targets (X. Hou et al, 2022).…”

“…One such category includes platform and project factors, such as appeal style (Bruyn & Prokopec, 2013; Kamatham et al, 2021; Moon & Vanepps, 2022), aid effectiveness and framing (Metzger & Günther, 2019), goal gradient (Kivetz et al, 2006), donation collection methods (Suk & Mudita, 2022), and the phrasing of projects (Gu & Chen, 2021; Lu et al, 2022; Pfeiffer et al, 2022). The second category includes initiator factors, such as demographic characteristics (X. Hou et al, 2022), social networks (Castillo et al, 2014; Jiao et al, 2021; Liu et al, 2022), stakeholder support and individual prestige (X. Hou et al, 2022). The final category includes donor factors, such as motivations (Bagheri et al, 2019; List et al, 2021), power (Winterich & Zhang, 2014), personal values (Sneddon et al, 2020), similarity in donor–donor dyads (Tian & Konrath, 2021) or donor‐beneficiary dyads (Chapman et al, 2022), and the effects of others' donation behavior (Klinowski, 2021; Mukherjee et al, 2020; Sasaki, 2019; Teunenbroek et al, 2019).…”