Questionnaires were designed based on the literature and discussions of professionals and practitioners. A trial survey was conducted prior to the formal survey, and the questionnaires were modified based on the suggestions of professionals, practitioners, and respondents to the trial survey. The formal survey was conducted by trained surveyors in the metropolitan area of Taipei, from July 30 to August 2, 2003. Stratified sampling was applied in this study based on the age distribution of the population in Taipei older than 20 by the end of 2002. The survey was conducted at the main train station, memorial parks, and a large department store in Taipei to ensure a diversity of respondents. The purpose of the survey was thoroughly explained to the individuals who were willing to participate. Respondents needed approximately 20 minutes to answer all the questions in the questionnaires. If for any reason respondents terminated the survey before finishing all the questions, the questionnaires were discarded.

Respondents were asked for personal experiences with charities, personal history of donations, charity information-searching behavior, personal percept- ions of relevant charity characteristics, and how their donation intentions are affected by certain activities of charities. The total valid sample was 246 out of 259 questionnaires. The samples that were classified as invalid were mainly due to incomplete answers. Since only a small percentage of the sample was not utilized in the analysis, bias should not cause undue concern. The comparison of age distribution of the sample and the population are shown in Table 1.

Descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and a probit model were utilized in this study to explain participation in charitable activities, donations, information- searching patterns, and activities and certain factors influencing willingness to donate and intentions to continue support charities. Factor analysis was used to extract the dimensions of consumers’ perceptions of donation-related characteristics. The probit model was applied to reveal how the dimensions from the factor analysis affected the intention to continue to make donations in addition to other variables.

Factor analysis is a technique used to generate new underlying variables that contain most of the information included in the original variables (Johnson, 1998). The extracted dimensions or factors are uncorrelated, while the variables within each factor are highly correlated. The basic objective of the factor analysis is to form underlying variables that occupy fewer dimensions and that can be utilized in subsequent analyses.

The probit model is used to examine the choice behavior of individuals when two alternatives are available and one has to be chosen (Judge, Hill, Griffiths, Lütkepohl, & Lee, 1988). In this study, a random variable yi represented the binary choice of willingness to continue to donate of the ith individual that takes the value of one if the respondents have the desire to provide monetary support to charities and of zero if they do not. The probit model was applied in this study to analyze the factors affecting possibilities of continuous donation intentions. With standard normal random variable z, the probability density function is 

The probit model is 

The probability p that y takes the value 1 is

where β_i’s are the parameter estimates of the probit model. The estimation of the probit model is to maximum the log likelihood function using the Newton- Raphson algorithm.

Participation in charitable activities and the donation behavior of respondents are indicated in Table 2. About half of the respondents had attended charitable activities at least once a year, but only a quarter of the respondents held memberships of charities. The majority of donations were in the form of cash, which is the most needed and preferred donation of charities. While donating money to charitable organizations, respondents like to hand it over to fundraisers directly (50.96%) or use bank transfers (51.92%). Collection boxes do influence some people to drop in money. However, the Internet is not a very efficient way to gather donations. For those respondents who plan to donate on a continuing basis, about half choose to support the same charities. The opinions of respondents who have tendencies to donate to different charities reveal that they sometimes feel the charities they have not been supporting seem to need money. The average donating times are 6.6 per year, roughly once in every two months. The average amount donated is US $368 per year. A principal components analysis was utilized in this study to determine the proper number of dimensions needed in the factor analysis. The maximum likelihood method with varimax rotation was applied in the factor analysis to extract the underlying variables to explain the concerns of consumers’ regarding charity donations. The first dimension based on the results of the factor analysis includes psychological, religious, and tax considerations and is termed motivation for donations. The second dimension describes responsibilities to assist needy people and to reduce problems in societies, which can be represented as altruism. The third dimension is related to the reputation of the charitable organizations, and the fourth dimension indicates involvement in charitable activities (see Table 3).

The content of charity information for which consumers have searched is diverse. The reputation of the charities (41.87%) and the groups/individuals that are classified to receive assistance from charities (41.06%) seem to be relatively important information to donors. The financial management of charities (25.61%) is less of a concern. A charity’s country of origin does not seem to interest consumers. These results signal important implications that when charities intend to communicate with potential or targeted donors, images related to the reputation of the organizations and information about donation recipients are more persuasive than is describing how efficiently the donations are managed financially. Where the charities were originally established may be of little importance as long as the information provided by charities appeals to potential and targeted donors.

For the influences of searching behavior on donation intentions, respondents selected 1 out of 5 options listed in the questionnaire that applied to their personal situations. These five levels describe the responses of respondents when receiving donation requests from charities, namely, respondents are not motivated to donate, want to know more about the charities but are not ready to donate yet, will donate if more information is provided, want to donate just once, and want to donate on a continuing basis. Results indicate that slightly fewer than 40% of respondents select the third level, indicating that they wish to donate if more information is available. Another 28% of respondents would donate upon searching charity information, either for a single donation (13.87%) or for a period of time (14.29%). The results reveal that if sufficient information about charities is provided, more than 60% of respondents would be willing to donate. Hence, the importance of information cannot be overemphasized for charities when seeking monetary support.

In order to discover the factors affecting willingness to donate on a continuing basis, binary responses were obtained and utilized in the probit model wherein the value of 1 indicates intention to donate on a continuing basis and 0 indicates no such intention. The four dimensions extracted from the factor analysis, demographics of respondents, and other related variables are shown in the probit model as the explanatory variables. The results indicate that two out of four underlying factors – the reputation of charities and the involvement of donors – positively influence willingness to donate on a continuing basis (Table 5). This result confirms the findings of prior researchers that the organizational image of charities affects consumers’ perceptions and behavior (Bennett & Gabriel, 2000). Those respondents who hold memberships of charities and who attend charity activities are prone to sponsor charities on a continuing basis. Individuals with higher income tend to give money for charitable aid. Other demographic factors do not significantly influence donation intentions.

Advertising and reports of charities or their marketing activities have positive impacts on donation intentions. Since the sources of charity information for consumers are mainly television and newspapers/magazines, detailed reports or advertisements of fundraising activities appearing in the media may increase consumers’ willingness to donate. The implications of the results are that when charities need to deliver information to consumers in marketing activities for certain purposes, utilizing advertising or detailed reports via the media can effectively enhance consumers’ donation intentions. Since a large portion of donations is handed over to charity personnel in cash, trained fundraisers also play important roles in persuading donors to provide monetary support.

The market of charitable donations has its own functional system. Under- standing consumers’ concerns and willingness to donate to charities can provide valuable insights into donation decisions and can be used to form baselines for charities in designing marketing strategies. The reputation of charities is vital both in gaining the confidence of donors and in persuading potential contributors to continue to support the organizations. The more participants charities can attract to get involved in their charitable activities, the better support charities can obtain from the public.

The information provided by charitable organizations can be an important way to communicate with potential or targeted donors. The strategic plans of the charitable organizations can be made more efficient in eliciting donations once the concerns of donors are realized. Based on the results of this study, television and newspapers/magazines are major sources of charity information for consumers. The reputation of charities and the recipients of donations are of more concern to donors than is the financial management of the charitable organizations. Fewer than 30% of respondents would provide monetary assistance when enquiries about donation are perceived. This figure could be increased to more than 60% if more relevant information were to become available to potential donors. Hence, the information provided by charities can be critical when seeking support from potential contributors.

In this study we examined the factors affecting consumers’ donations to charities and the willingness to continue to support charitable organizations. The restrictions of this study are that charities are not further classified into different categories. Further researchers may need to gather detailed information of the particular char- acteristics for which certain segments of consumers search in specific categories of charities. Strategies can then be designed primarily for targeted segments of consumers.

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