How do attention and emotion drive donations in charitable crowdfunding? An empirical study of users’ cognitive and physiological responses to image content

Abstract: This study investigates the attentional and emotional impact of different image types in medical crowdfunding campaigns, and how these images impact donations. Building on signaling theory and evolutionary explanations for the drivers of altruism, we hypothesized that donors will be more likely to support campaigns with images that depict illness than campaigns with images that do not, and that donors will be more likely to support campaigns with images that depict groups than campaigns with images that depict individuals. We performed an online experiment and a laboratory experiment to test these hypotheses. The results support the hypotheses. Further, consistent with our evolutionary explanations of altruism, we find that images that depict illness receive more immediate attention and arousal than other images, and images that depict multiple individuals receive more total attention than images of individuals. These findings provide valuable insights to help understand how visual information in medical crowdfunding triggers the prioritization of specific fundraisers among potential donors.