The Influence Of Payment Methods On Charitable Donation Intention

Objectives: Payment methods were not only a payment medium for charitable donations,but also had a potential effect on donation intention.When charities raised money,if the concept of cash was mentioned,the individual's donation intention decreased importantly,which made charities in a dilemma.For this problem,researchers had pointed out that individual subconsciously different payment methods had their own specific "cost-benefit" evaluation.Individuals chose different methods could affect individual's donation intention significantly.Based on the theory of Mental Account,this study chose the common cash payment and mobile payment as the research object.The research started with the forms of money(small banknotes and large banknotes)and the sources of money.It explored the internal reasons why the payment methods affected donation intention.The above results were expected to provide empirical evidence for the connection between payment methods and the concept of cost and benefit.Methods: The experiments were conducted on college students in Changsha.The pre-experiment was a single factor designed.The concept of different payment methods was primed by sentence sorting task,in order to verify the influence of payment on donation intention from the implicit level.According to the result of the pre-experiment,study 1 wasbetween-subjects designed: 2(Payment methods: cash payment / mobile payment)×2(The forms of money: small banknotes / large banknotes).It explored the influence of payment method and the forms of money(small banknotes and large banknotes)on donation intention and provided evidence for specific connection between payment methods and the concept of "cost-benefit".Study 2 was between-subjects designed:2(Payment methods: cash payment / mobile payment)×2(The sources of money: labor income / windfall).It introduced the variable of the sources of money to test the stability of the influence of different payment methods on donation intention.The results provided evidence for the influence of money sources on donation intention and "cost-benefit" evaluation of donation behavior.Study 3 was within-subjects designed : 2(Payment concepts: cash payment concept / mobile payment concept)×2(Vocabulary: cost word / benefit word).It used Stroop test to examine the connection between different payment methods and the concept of cost and benefit from the implicit level through the difference in reaction time.Results:(1)The pre-experiment,study 1 and study 2 all confirmed that the donation intention of individuals using mobile payment was significantly stronger than that of individuals cash payment.(2)Study 1 showed that the donation amount of mobile payment group was significantly higher than that of cash payment group,and there was no significant difference in the amount and times of donation underdifferent treatments(small banknotes and large banknotes).The amount and times of donation in cash payment group was significantly affected by the small banknotes,which made them have stronger donation intention.The forms of money played an important role in the cost and benefit evaluation of individual donation behavior.Small banknotes promoted individuals tended to benefit evaluation.(3)Study 2 showed that windfall and mobile payment could not only significantly promote individual donation intention,but also make an individual evaluation of donation behavior tended to benefit evaluation.(4)Study 3 showed that the concept of payment influenced individual response to the color judgment of cost-related words and benefit-related words eminently.The individual who primed the mobile payment concept and the cash payment concept had longer reaction time to the color judgment of cost-related words and benefit-related words.Conclusions: At the explicit level,the difference of the payment method between the forms of money(small banknotes and large banknotes)and the sources of money led to the change of individual donation intention.At the implicit level,different payment methods had formed specific link with cost and benefit.Priming the concept of payment methods would lead to relevant "cost-benefit" evaluation,which affected donation intention.