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NTU Management Review Vol. 32 No. 2 Aug. 2022

success. Kuppuswamy and Bayus (2017) also find that the contribution of other investors
on the platform is crucial in shaping project funding success.
While prior studies have suggested that social networks play an important role in
fundraising, whether the increasing social network size only benefits projects remains

unexplored (Chiu and Chang, 2015). Indeed, within the project’s social network, a few
supporters only psychologically support the project by merely clicking the “Like” button
but not contributing funds. The question of interest is whether these social ties also

contribute to better fundraising performance. We draw on the bystander effect perspective
from the social psychological literature to develop our arguments.
The bystander effect is defined as situations in which individuals are less likely to of-
fer any means of help to those in need when others are present (Darley and Latané, 1968).
This perspective suggests that the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that

any one of them will offer help. Scholars show that bystanders abstain from providing help
for three reasons (Latané and Nida, 1981). First, bystanders do not offer any help because
they fear that their helping behavior would be negatively construed by other bystanders,

also known as audience inhibition. Second, in an ambiguous situation, bystanders are
more likely to look for information cues from other bystanders. When bystanders notice
that no one is providing help, they will restrain their helping behavior; this is called social
influence. Third, bystanders might not take action in the presence of other people because
they believe that someone else will take up this responsibility, also referred to as the diffu-

sion of responsibility. Furthermore, Fischer et al. (2011) show that the bystander effect can
be extended to non-emergency situations. In such cases, people will assume that someone
else will eventually help, and therefore, there might be less need for them to provide any

help. However, the bystander effect is less likely to occur in emergency situations (Fischer
et al., 2011).
Recently management scholars have applied the notion of the bystander effect
in the social media and crowdfunding contexts. Chiu and Chang (2015) find that the
increasing size of social networks might not contribute to more social support on

Facebook. Bystanders on the crowdfunding platform are defined as those who only
psychologically support the project but have not contributed any funds (Chan et al., 2020;
Kuppuswamy and Bayus, 2017). For example, people might psychologically support a

project by clicking “Like” on the project’s webpage. Along the campaign fundraising

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