The purpose of this article is to understand how online marketing communications influence donors. This article postulates, in the online arena, by taking the intangible and making it real, definite, solid, or easily grasped, one can positively impact donation. The data were collected in a lab where respondents from a university in the southwest United States explored a well-known nonprofit website. Following the exploration, they responded to a series of survey questions. The findings show that a well-designed website decreases perceptions of intangibility and increases donation. For inexperienced donors, the affective aspects of the site are more influential in determining donation. Our study is one of the first to focus on how specific information on a nonprofit website may influence donation with regards to intangibility. Our work was limited by the use of students and hypothetical situations. By utilizing cognitively and affectively laden website characteristics effectively, nonprofits can influence decision making and subsequent donation through organizational perceptions of intangibility.

中文翻译：

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网站信息如何降低无形性并影响捐赠

本文的目的是了解在线营销传播如何影响捐赠者。本文假设，在网络领域，通过将无形的东西变为真实、确定、坚实或易于掌握，可以对捐赠产生积极影响。这些数据是在一个实验室收集的，来自美国西南部一所大学的受访者在那里浏览了一个著名的非营利网站。在探索之后，他们回答了一系列调查问题。研究结果表明，精心设计的网站会减少对无形性的看法并增加捐赠。对于没有经验的捐赠者，该网站的情感方面对确定捐赠的影响更大。我们的研究是最早关注非营利性网站上的特定信息如何影响无形捐赠的研究之一。我们的工作受到学生的使用和假设情况的限制。通过有效利用认知和情感负载的网站特征，非营利组织可以通过组织对无形性的感知来影响决策和随后的捐赠。