Toward a Better Understanding of Crisis and Online Prosocial Lending

In this study, we examine crowd lenders’ responses to crisis as well as the variations of their responses. Drawing on the literature on crisis response and online prosocial behavior, we propose that lenders respond positively to loans in crisis-affected areas, and that such responses are shaped by contextual factors including loan value orientation and lenders’ cultural orientation. With field data from the largest prosocial lending platform and the 2014 Ebola outbreak as a natural experiment design, we find that lenders respond positively to loans in crisis-affected areas. The results further suggest that lenders’ positive responses are stronger to loans with greater economic value orientation rather than social value orientation, and lenders in collectivistic cultures respond more positively than those from individualistic cultures to loans in crisis-affected areas. We provide important implications for the literature on crisis response and prosocial behaviors. Practical implications are also discussed.