Abstract
We use the data of 10,577 donations on an online fundraising platform and explore an answer for when a donor is more likely to be influenced by other donors. The important feature of this platform is that a fundraising page displays each amount of the previous individual donations in chronological order. In our empirical model, we construct variables to explain the information that a donor actually sees on the webpage. The main variables are the modal amount among the last five donations and their appearances along the sequence. We find that when a greater number among the last five donors make a same amount donation, it is more likely that a new donation is equal to that modal donation amount. However, we do not see this phenomenon when the last two continuous donors give in the same amount. These findings indicate that the last continuous three or more modal donations have significantly positive impacts on the likelihood that a new donation is equal to the modal amount.
