The Impact of Geography on the Success of Prosocial Crowdfunding

Prosocial crowdfunding is gaining popularity as an alternative tool to traditional offline charity. While the success of crowdfunding projects aimed at pursuing commercial gains has been studied extensively, less research has addressed the factors that affect the success of prosocial crowdfunding campaigns. More specifically, there is even less research related to geographical factors. Building on charitable giving literature, we employ the lens of moral cosmopolitanism to hypothesize how geographical factors impact the success of prosocial crowdfunding campaigns. We conducted our investigation on a sample of 350 campaigns launched on StartSomeGood and found that contributors, despite a hype on cosmopolitan responsibility induced by digital platforms, prefer recipients in developed countries and, when donating to recipients in developing countries, show a preference for initiators from developed countries.