Understanding the intention to donate online in the Chinese context: The influence of norms and trust

Due to the advancement of information and communication technologies, online donations have become unprecedentedly convenient, making money received from individual online donations an important form of revenue for many charitable organizations in China. However, factors contributing to people’s online donation intentions, in turn impacting donating behavior, have been under-examined. The current study aims to understand factors influencing online donation intention in the Chinese cultural context by combining constructs from the extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB; including the original TPB constructs and moral norm) and trust-related constructs (i.e., trust in charity organizations and trust in technology). The moderation effect of past donation behavior on the relationship between trust and donation intention was also explored. A total of 721 Chinese participants completed the online survey. SPSS was used to perform hierarchical multiple regressions. The results showed that attitude, perceived behavioral control, moral norm, and subjective norm were all positively related to online donation intention. Moral norm was found to be a stronger predictor than subjective norm, raising the amount of explained variance of the original TPB model. Trust in charity organizations was found to positively predict donation intention while trust in technology was not. The results also revealed that past donation behavior moderated the effect of trust in charity organizations on donation intention. This study not only adds to the body of knowledge on charitable donation in the online context by incorporating two trust-related constructs into the extended TPB model, but also highlights the different roles moral and subjective norms play in predicting people’s prosocial behavior in the context of Chinese culture.