#DONATE NOW

Derived from the Social Network Theory and the Collective Action Approach, the problem of research aims to examine the role of the sender as well as the medium carrying a social cause campaign message in generating trust towards an advertisement on recipient side.
Using a quantitative inter-subject online experiment (N= 481), it is further to be scrutinized if the level of ADTRUST might function as a predictor for recipients to engage in civic activities. With social media providing unique and innovative strategies for non-profit organizations to disseminate campaign messages and to motivate users to get involved in civic activities, this research focuses on the outcome of donation campaigns.
It was demonstrated that campaign messages distributed via SNS might generate higher levels of ADTRUST compared to traditional print advertising, as well as that ADTRUST has also shown to predict (1) information seeking behavior, (2) offline communication behavior and (3) social media behavior concerning a civic issue. The (4) actual donation behavior has still shown to be relatively low. Results suggest that SNS play an essential and beneficial role for non-profit organizations to increase attention towards and involvement in social-cause campaigns as well as to educate the public concerning civic issues. Still, donation campaigns seem to remain a precarious issue requiring cross-medial communication strategies as well as further research in pursuance of an increased outcome.