title: Appealing to the crowd: ethical justifications in Canadian medical crowdfunding campaigns.
abstract: Medical crowdfunding is growing in terms of the number of active campaigns, amount of funding raised and public visibility. Little is known about how campaigners appeal to potential donors outside of anecdotal evidence collected in news reports on specific medical crowdfunding campaigns. This paper offers a first step towards addressing this knowledge gap by examining medical crowdfunding campaigns for Canadian recipients. Using 80 medical crowdfunding campaigns for Canadian recipients, we analyse how Canadians justify to others that they ought to contribute to funding their health needs. We find the justifications campaigners tend to fall into three themes: personal connections, depth of need and giving back. We further discuss how these appeals can understood in terms of ethical justifications for giving and how these justifications should be assessed in light of the academic literature on ethical concerns raised by medical crowdfunding.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
authors.forename: Jeremy
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Snyder
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
authors.forename: Valorie A
authors.initials: VA
authors.lastname: Crooks
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
authors.forename: Annalise
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mathers
authors.affiliation: School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Chow-White
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000191:economics*; D002170:Canada; D063045:Crowdsourcing / Q000941:ethics*; D017048:Health Care Costs / Q000941:ethics*; D061889:Healthcare Financing / Q000941:ethics*; D006801:Humans; D012109:Research Support as Topic / Q000941:ethics
keywords: Allocation of Health Care Resources; Decision-making; Resource Allocation; Social Aspects