The Drivers of Donations: Personal Morality or Just a Bandwagon Effect?

Abstract

Despite extensive research on charitable giving, studies tend to focus either on internal moral motivations or on external social influence, with limited integration of these two perspectives and little attention given to their joint impacts in digital philanthropic contexts. Addressing this gap, this study examines how donation intentions are driven by both moral identity and bandwagon effects and investigates the mediating role of engagement with the charitable cause on social media. Drawing on Social Identity Theory, we conceptualise moral identity as an intrinsic driver of prosocial behaviour, while the bandwagon effect reflects conformity to others' actions. Using survey data from 976 respondents in Lithuania and performing PLS-SEM analysis, this study tests both the direct and indirect effects of these factors on donation intentions in a crowdfunding context. The results show that both moral identity and the bandwagon effect positively affect donation intentions. However, their impact mechanisms differ: moral identity is mainly a direct driver, whereas the impact of the bandwagon effect is strongly mediated through engagement with the charitable cause on social media. These findings highlight the complementary roles of intrinsic and socially driven motivations and contribute by integrating moral identity and bandwagon effect within a unified framework.