JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Medical crowdfunding has emerged as a critical tool to alleviate the financial burden of healthcare costs, particularly in regions where economic disparities limit access to medical treatment. Despite its potential, the success rates of medical crowdfunding projects remain low, with only 9% achieving their fundraising goals in China. Previous research has examined isolated factors influencing success, but a holistic understanding of how multimodal affordances—narrativity, visibility, and progress—collectively impact donor behavior and project outcomes is lacking.

Objective:

This study aims to investigate how medical crowdfunding affordances, as an integrated system, influence the success of charitable crowdfunding projects. Specifically, it explores the roles of narrativity (textual elements), visibility (visual elements), and progress (dynamic updates) affordances, and how these interact with patient demographics to shape donor engagement and fundraising outcomes.

Methods:

A multimodal analysis was conducted using 1,261 medical crowdfunding projects from the Shuidichou platform in China. Machine learning techniques (e.g., sentiment analysis via SnowNLP) and regression models were employed to examine textual content (e.g., titles, story descriptions), visual elements (e.g., number of photos), and progress updates (e.g., frequency, sentiment). Control variables included patient age, gender, and beneficiary type. Hypotheses were tested using both continuous (success ratio) and binary (success indicator) measures of project success.

Results:

The study found that narrativity affordances—such as longer titles and detailed descriptions—boosted success, while overly lengthy surplus fund details had diminishing returns. Disease and gender mentions in titles increased donations, but age references reduced engagement. Positive sentiment in stories and plans enhanced outcomes, whereas excessively optimistic titles underperformed. For visibility affordances, a moderate number of progress photos maximized donor response, but excessive visuals weakened impact. Story images showed no significant effect. Progress affordances followed a similar pattern: frequent updates helped, but too many reduced effectiveness. Positive updates particularly benefited individual beneficiaries. Demographics also played a key role. Both young and elderly patients attracted more support than middle-aged individuals, and female beneficiaries generally fared better. These insights demonstrate how strategic content design and audience targeting can optimize crowdfunding success.

Conclusions:

This study advances the medical crowdfunding affordance theory by demonstrating the interconnected effects of narrativity, visibility, and progress affordances on project success. Practical insights include optimizing text length, strategically disclosing demographic details, and balancing update frequency to enhance donor trust and engagement. Platform designers and project organizers can leverage these findings to improve fundraising outcomes and address healthcare inequalities more effectively. Future research should explore additional visual content analysis and donor psychology to refine these strategies.