Prosocial Behavior during the Pandemic: Evidence from Online Donation Data amid COVID-19

In the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional offline charity events and fundraising campaigns are suspended to slow down the transmission of the highly infectious disease. Therefore, online donation platforms and donation-based crowdfunding platforms play an important role in raising charity funds to help the poor and underprivileged. By using data from a major donation-based crowdfunding platform in United States, we study how COVID-19 spread affects people’s online donation behavior. The COVID-19 pandemic is a unique setting that differs from typical disaster events examined in the prior literature, because it affects not only fundraisers but also donors. We find that donors’ awareness of COVID-19 situation around fundraisers increases their donations while COVID-19 spread in a donor’s state reduces her donations. At the same time, there exists an interaction effect, that is, the COVID-19 situation around donors would enhance the positive effect of donors’ awareness of COVID-19 situation around fundraisers. In addition, the positive effect of donors’ awareness of COVID-19 situation around fundraisers decreases with the distance between donors and fundraisers. Our findings extend prior work on donation-based crowdfunding platforms and contribute to the literature on the impact of disasters on prosocial behavior by focusing on a pandemic disaster that pose threats to both donors and fundraisers.