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Online medical crowdfunding (OMC) has attracted massive attention and participation in China. Despite its goal to lift the financial burden caused by expensive medical expenditure, little has been done to evaluate its impact on healthcare inequality. We examine the social consequences of OMC based on a large random sample extracted from one of the...
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Context 1
... a crowdfunding campaign, the initiator gets financial support from a large group of donors, each of whom only needs to donate a small amount. As for OMC, it differs from traditional channels mentioned above along three main dimensions, namely the interaction medium, types of backers, and motivation of donation (see Table 1). These differences indicate that OMC has a unique mechanism for fundraising. ...Similar publications
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Citations
... While fundraisers feel compelled to depict their situation as desperate and urgent to warrant economic assistance, donors are typically moved by the contrast between the individual's prior positive state and the suffering caused by illness (Kim et al., 2018). Although narrative strategies have been analyzed in medical crowdfunding campaign outcomes, further exploration is needed to understand how and why specific narrative strategies influence these outcomes (Zheng & Jiang, 2022). ...
... This emotional resonance can lead to increased commenting as people seek validation, support, or catharsis in response to negative content. However, this finding contrasts with Zheng and Jiang (2022), who identified that expressions of optimism are associated with higher medical crowdfunding performance. ...
Attracting donations is challenging but imperative for fundraisers to secure donations. Solicitation narratives serve as a key strategy for attracting both acquaintances and strangers, thereby influencing donation behavior. To optimize medical crowdfunding messaging on social media, this study explores prevalent content features of medical crowdfunding messages on Sina Weibo and determines whether these features impact message effectiveness. A retrospective content analysis was conducted on medical crowdfunding posts on Sina Weibo in China throughout 2023. The posts were systematically coded for the author’s gender, author type, target audience, key themes, human imagery, message sentiments, and message strategies, with their effectiveness analyzed using SPSS. Out of the 394 posts analyzed, private authors emerged as the dominant voices, directing their appeals predominantly toward the general public and often expressing neutral to negative sentiments. The overarching theme across these posts centered on the dire need for medical assistance. Including human imagery and informative message strategies was pivotal in determining post-effectiveness, eliciting heightened audience engagement in terms of likes and shares. Negative sentiment posts influenced comment effectiveness. These findings underscore the potential of social media campaigns in promoting altruistic health behaviors while emphasizing the critical role of strategic message design through the use of human imagery, informative message strategies, and negative sentiment to improve audience engagement.
... Relatedly, future work should widen the scope beyond the U.S. healthcare system to additional countries and contexts. Considerable work has focused on different socio-economic and political systems (e.g., Coutrot et al., 2020;Jin, 2019;Neuwelt-Kearns et al., 2021;Stewart et al., 2022;Wardell, 2023;Zheng and Jiang, 2022), indicating the distinct role that medical crowdfunding has in such contexts compared to the U.S. context of privatized healthcare system with rising healthcare costs and debts, and inadequate healthcare insurance coverage. We call for further empirical work that will build on the above results and explore the influence of medical crowdfunding on public views on healthcare in different contexts. ...
... Finally, we call for more work that will build on the work of Ba et al. (2021), Jin (2019) and Zheng and Jiang (2022) to provide valuable insights on non-democratic, authoritarian regimes like China, where crowdfunding platforms are authorized (and to a large extent controlled) by the state. Overall, we advocate for greater academic scrutiny and scholarship on how medical crowdfunding can be redesigned to improve public health and social equality in the long-term. ...
As a response to the shortcomings of the U.S. healthcare system, Americans are increasingly turning to crowdfunding platforms to bankroll their health-related costs. However, although medical crowdfunding has rapidly become institutionalized as part of the U.S. healthcare financing landscape, empirical evidence on how Americans perceive its role in healthcare and the impact it might have on public attitudes is scarce. To shed more light on the above, we analyze data from one correlational and one experimental study conducted over September-November 2021. Our correlational study reveals that political orientation is associated with Americans’ views on medical crowdfunding. Specifically, we find that those who self-identified as conservative perceived medical crowdfunding as a valid part of the system, and more positively than a universal healthcare system. In contrast, medical crowdfunding is perceived less positively, as hindering a system of universal and affordable healthcare by those more liberally-oriented. In our experimental study, we explore how medical crowdfunding narratives can induce social attitudes conducive to change. Specifically, we test the effect of politicized narratives (vs. control) on group efficacy and subsequently on collective action intentions for healthcare reform, as a function of political orientation. Our results show that politicized narratives might induce collective action intentions through higher group efficacy, but only among those who self-identified as conservative. Liberally-oriented individuals held high collective action intentions for healthcare reform and were not affected by the manipulation. Our work is the first to establish empirically that medical crowdfunding, when employing politicized narratives, can induce collective action intentions, but this effect is moderated by political ideology.
