Good intentions may be wrong: evidence from anonymous donation behaviour on Chinese charitable crowdfunding platform

Using web crawling and statistical regression models based on large-scale platform data, this study examines how previous anonymous and non-anonymous donations influence subsequent contributions on charitable crowdfunding platforms, with a particular focus on health-related campaigns. Through web crawling, this study collected 1,136 projects from Qingsongchou and empirically analysed the herding effect in donation behaviour. Results indicate a significant herding effect in both anonymous and non-anonymous donations, as well as in donation amounts. This effect is stronger among non-anonymous donors compared to anonymous ones. Furthermore, this study explore moderating channels and find that social media sharing weakens the herding effect for anonymous donations but does not significantly alter the differential herding behaviour between the two groups. By distinguishing between early and late fundraising stages, this study also observe that the herding effect difference is more pronounced in the early stage. These findings enhance understanding of the economic implications of anonymous donations under information asymmetry and offer practical insights for improving anonymity mechanisms in health-oriented charitable crowdfunding.