“A Contribution Shared Is a Contribution Halved”: The Influence of Tie Strength‐Based Disclosure Strategy on Potential Donors' Donation Amounts

ABSTRACT Donation‐based crowdfunding platforms have increasingly applied disclosure strategies to encourage potential donors to contribute. However, most existing research has not studied the efficacy of showing donors' information by considering the tie strength between the disclosed donors and potential donors. This research was intended to investigate the interactive effects of disclosing donors' information and the tie strength between disclosed and potential donors on potential donors' donation amounts, employing the conceptual frameworks of the we‐mode and I‐mode. Through three online between‐subject experiments ( N total = 801), we found that when there was a strong tie between disclosed and potential donors, the disclosure of donors' information led to a decrease in potential donors' donation amounts. The propensity to co‐represent contribution (i.e., the extent to which potential donors take into account the contributions from disclosed donors along with their own as a joint contribution to a donation‐based crowdfunding project) drove the process. Moreover, we also confirmed the boundary condition of recipient type. When the recipient was a group (vs. individual), the negative effect of the propensity to co‐represent contribution on the donation amount was reversed, resulting in the disclosure of donation information from strong‐tie contacts boosting the donation amounts of potential donors. The results challenged the intuition that disclosing social information always increased individuals' donation amounts and complemented the empirical evidence of the negative impact of social information disclosure.