Rob Gleasure

Does Heart or Head Rule Donor Behaviors in Charitable Crowdfunding Markets

ABSTRACT Crowdfunding has matured into a meaningful online marketplace, both for traditional e-commerce activities and for charitable fundraising. For charities, crowdfunding presents novel donation behaviors, including those where donors may proactively seek out causes and give (often anonymously) to help others with whom they share little social connectivity. Understanding these behaviors is challenging compared to traditional fundraising behaviors, where charitable giving is partly explained by factors such as guilt avoidance, reciprocity, image, vicarious enjoyment, and group-level benefits. This suggests that some subset of charitable motivations is brought uniquely into focus in crowdfunding marketplaces. These marketplaces are often inhabited by fundseeking individuals and larger formal organizations. This adds further complexity, given that donors traditionally perceive and interact differently with charitable organizations and less formal fundraising entities. This study explores donation behavior in charitable crowdfunding based on the distinction between “pure altruism” and “warm glow” motivations. We offer a discriminatory model of donation behaviors toward individuals and organizations, which is then tested in a large-scale field study of Razoo.com. Findings suggest that donations to organizations are more influenced by outcome-related factors, such as fundraising targets and the likelihood of meeting that target, while donations to individuals are more influenced by interaction-related factors, such as the level of dialogue around a campaign.

Information sharing and user behavior in internet-enabled peer-to-peer lending systems: an empirical study

Internet-based information systems (IS) have enabled various forms of collective intelligence, action, and resources (e.g. open source software, innovation marketplaces, crowdsourcing, and crowdfunding). Within the domain of crowdfunding, Internet-enabled Peer-to-Peer Lending Systems (IP2PLS) have emerged as a disruptive technology, with implications for the financial services sector, business capitalization strategies, and personal and community development. IS research investigating user behavior in IP2PLS has revealed the saliency of social identity and personal transparency (as expressed through information sharing) in such systems. Prior research has largely focused on a small number of IP2PLS providers, thus this study examines a very large but under-researched platform. The study tests a theoretical model based on Social Identity Theory and prior IP2PLS studies, through an analysis of 116,667 loan records, and a subsequent analysis of 1000 manually coded records, to investigate the impact of information sharing on user (lenders and borrowers) behavior. The study reveals the importance of social (vs financial) data, and further reveals relationships that frequently contradict prior findings from other IP2PLS. The study thus implies the need for a more heterogeneous view of the IP2PLS domain, and the need to more fully understand as systems that support user behavior by enabling social information exchanges.

How can mHealth applications that are developed in one area of the developing world be adapted for use in others

Abstract The quality of healthcare in developing countries remains a critical issue, due in part to the limited infrastructure and resources available. The development of mHealth systems has been proposed as a possible solution. These systems extend the reach of medical care into rural areas by integrating smartphones and other mobile devices. Yet it is not clear how mHealth solutions designed and tested for use in one developing region can be adapted for use in others. This research-in-progress study frames this problem using a sociomaterial/coping perspective. A case study is proposed to extend and refine this model.

Exploring the Application of Blockchain Technology to Combat the Effects of Social Loafing in Cross Functional Group Projects

Today, many multi-national organisations operate in a dispersed geographical environment. Teams consisting of members from around the globe can be assembled on an as-needed basis. However, this can prove to be a complex managerial task. Individuals, who believe that their efforts are not being effectively monitored by upper management, lose their motivation to fully contribute to the best of their abilities as they do not believe there is any correlation between the effort they exert and the reward they receive. With low levels of intrinsic involvement among employees, a lack of task visibility from upper management and limited social interaction among group members, many organisations struggle to combat the issue of social loafing in cross functional working groups. Blockchain technology, widely acknowledged as enabling openness, can facilitate the development of an immutable, transparent, secure and verifiable application for capturing individuals Intellectual Property as they work. This would motivate employees to more openly contribute to group work, safe in the knowledge that their contribution will be recognised, enabling management to maintain a high level of task visibility over their employees work without requiring their physical presence.

Social Identity and Social Media Activities in Equity Crowdfunding

The existence of crowdfunding platforms has helped creators to bring their innovative products to market. In recent years, equity crowdfunding has increased in popularity as an alternative form of finance, and has helped thousands of innovating entrepreneurs to raise money, and join a broader conversation with large numbers of potential investors. Early-stage startup investment is no longer restricted to venture capital firms and high net worth angel investors. Using Social Identity Theory (SIT) as a basis, we look at a sample of crowdfunding campaigns from the UK-based platform, Crowdcube. In this study we are trying to understand how groups of potential crowdfunding investors act in relation to the social media activities of those campaigns. We examine how different social media activities of can have an impact upon the funding of a crowdfunding campaign. This study has significant implications for fundraisers who want to utilize social media to increase their chances of a successful crowdfunding campaign. In our study we identify that by being more active on social media, and having a higher level of engagement with the crowd, this will have a positive impact on the overall funding of a crowdfunding campaign.

Exploring hidden influences on users’ decision-making: A feature-lesioning technique to assist design thinking

Abstract This study presents a qualitative design thinking technique to help system designers explore hidden influences on users’ decision-making processes. This technique targets context-specific influences that have accumulated in the absence of conscious reflection, and hence may exist without users’ awareness. Such processes may lie outside the reach of traditional discursive approaches; thus, our technique augments existing approaches with a method for ‘lesioning’ information sources, i.e. removing specific information sources and observing how and when users’ decision-making behaviour breaks down. This deconstruction allows dependencies to be exposed, allowing a better understanding of hidden influences, which can then be assimilated into design ideation. The lesioning technique is tested and demonstrated over multiple experimental iterations in the context of Twitter, a leading social media service. These iterations present several insights and design opportunities surrounding how users determine what connections to form and how those users make sense of information on busy content feeds.

Designing an artefact to help users make intervention decisions about their wellness

Abstract Healthcare systems have been evolving towards more decentralised, patient- empowered, and holistic approaches. This places a greater expectation on patients to monitor and report changes in their general wellness so they can make decisions as to when to seek clinical interventions. However, findings from this study suggest individuals find it challenging to detect deteriorations in wellness, due to the vast and multifaceted nature of the concept, the gradual onset of symptoms, and the difficulty in articulating change. Thus a mobile application is developed to help users with these issues. The design of this mobile application draws upon existing cognitive neuroscience research on change detection, both for external stimuli and internal ‘interoceptive’ sensations. This highlights several key factors to be considered, if wellness-related decision-making is to be supported. In particular, this identifies the role of patients’ top-down (attentional) and bottom-up (less-voluntary) processes for detecting wellness deteriorations.

Mobile health solutions in developing countries: a stakeholder perspective

Abstract Infrastructural deficiencies, limited access to medical care, and shortage of health care workers are just a few of the barriers to health care in developing countries. mHealth has the potential to overcome at least some of these challenges. To address this, a stakeholder perspective is adopted and an analysis of existing research is undertaken to look at mHealth delivery in developing countries. This study focuses on four key stakeholder groups i.e., health care workers, patients, system developers, and facilitators. A systematic review identifies 108 peer-reviewed articles, which are analysed to determine the extent these articles investigate the different types of stakeholder interactions, and to identify high-level themes emerging within these interactions. This analysis illustrates two key gaps. First, while interactions involving health care workers and/or patients have received significant attention, little research has looked at the role of patient-to-patient interactions. Second, the interactions between system developers and the other stakeholder groups are strikingly under-represented.

Does Miner Pooling Impact Bitcoin's Ability to Stay Decentralized?

The Emerging Blockchain technologies have earned substantial attention in the area of Financial Technology in recent years. Its decentralized environment allows for the mining of Bitcoins by miners either independently or in groups. The community of miners have faith in the integrity of each other to sustain the network, through mining pools remaining at a reasonable level of mining power. Blockchains decentralized system is one of its main selling points and is a source of great attraction for users. However, when these mining pools start to grow and increase their mining power to dangerous levels it can result in a shift towards a centralized environment. This push goes against foundational principles of Bitcoin, leading to ongoing debate among various stakeholders.

When to use Rewards in Charitable Crowdfunding

Charitable crowdfunding is an important source of funds for charitable organizations. The offer of tokens or rewards is often used to entice potential donors to donate to a cause. This study investigates when it is beneficial to offer rewards in a charitable crowdfunding campaign. Three design principles are developed from the current literature which aim to help in the creation of a successful crowdfunding campaign. Important factors identified were types of donations a charitable organization usually receives, the groups of donors associated with that organization and the need for one time considerably large donations.