The impact of air pollution on crowdfunding donations for critical illnesses: Evidence from China

Sheng Hua, Huina Liu, Zheng Ji and Han Liang

China Economic Review, 2025, vol. 91, issue C

Abstract: The study explores the relationship between air pollution and individual philanthropic donations, specifically within the context of crowdfunding for critical illnesses. We analyze 113,974 crowdfunding projects for critical illness on Qingsongchou (QSC), China's leading medical crowdfunding platform, from March 22, 2015, to October 1, 2018, to evaluate the influence of air pollution (measured by AQI) on donations for critical illness, with an emphasis on the donors. We find that donation reduces by 2 % for every standard deviation rise in AQI. We attribute this reduction to the psychological and cognitive effects induced by air pollution, since donations for critical illnesses—typically scattered and small-scaled—are more susceptible to these external factors. Using Baidu Index data, we confirm that heightened air pollution increases attention to pollution, triggers negative emotions, and amplifies perceptions of distrust, collectively leading to a decline in crowdfunding donations.

Keywords: Air pollution; Crowdfunding donations for critical illnesses; Emotion; Attention; Trust (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D64 D91 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X25000495
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:91:y:2025:i:c:s1043951x25000495

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2025.102391

Access Statistics for this article

China Economic Review is currently edited by B.M. Fleisher, K. X. D. Huang, M.E. Lovely, Y. Wen, X. Zhang and X. Zhu

More articles in China Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().