Donation via Mobile Applications: A Study of the Factors Affecting Mobile Donation Application Use

As smartphones are now widely used, new types of mobile donation applications have emerged. These new types of mobile donation applications transform giving into easy and convenient activities without interfering in users’ daily schedules, and they enable users to keep donating. However, there is still a lack of research on these new types of mobile donation applications as a new venue of technology-mediated civic engagement. The purpose of this article is to investigate the important factors that affect people’s continuance intention to use mobile donation applications. Based on previous studies of cause-related marketing, this study identifies four attributes—type-cause fit, name-cause fit, cause involvement, and perceived effectiveness—that play an important role in mobile donation applications. Our survey results show that all four attributes have significant positive impacts on users’ willingness to use mobile donation applications. The results of this study contribute to mobile application and donation research and provide guidelines for practitioners on the design and creation of mobile donation applications.