Key drivers of medical crowdfunding success: a comprehensive analysis of 84,712 projects

Medical crowdfunding, an emerging form of internet-based financing, has seen immense growth globally in recent years, playing a significant role in supporting vulnerable groups to afford medical expense. In China, the insufficiency of medical insurance to cover all medical expenses, coupled with significant urban-rural disparities, leaves certain households, especially those in impoverished regions, unable to bear unforeseen high healthcare costs. Consequently, there arises a need for medical crowdfunding as a supplementary mechanism to the healthcare insurance system. The performance of existing medical crowdfunding projects, as well as the factors affecting the success rate, however, have been largely been overlooked. This study collects a large dataset from one of China’s largest crowdfunding platforms, encompassing 84,712 unique projects, and employs comprehensive analysis on investigating the impact of a variety of factors, including project features and patient characteristics. The results indicate that both project features and patient characteristics significantly affect the performance of medical crowdfunding projects, encompassing aspects like fundraising target amount, patient age, disease type, and geographic location. Notably, donors in China tend to favor projects aiding teenagers, leukemia sufferers, and cancer patients. Additionally, an intriguing observation is that patients in affluent regions are more likely to receive financial support through medical crowdfunding, which reveals the inequity in the geographic distribution of medical crowdfunding. Our research not only contribute to providing a valuable addition to the field of medical crowdfunding, but also provide insightful guidance and practical recommendations for crowdfunding platforms and fundraisers.