The moderating role of helper's high in anchoring process: An empirical investigation in the context of charity website design

An individual's hedonic motivation has been examined as an important factor in online behaviors. In identifying website design elements to facilitate user behaviors, researchers and practitioners have utilized the anchoring approach. The anchoring approach requires users to interact with the trial version of a website (the control) before evaluating the finished version of a website (the variation). Despite the importance of hedonic motivation and utilization of the anchoring approach, prior research has not paid much attention to the anchoring process of hedonic users. Drawing on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), this study examines hedonic donors' anchoring process in the context of charity website design. Specifically, this study theorizes and empirically tests the moderation of helper's high on the effects of attitude toward a trial website (ATW) and information content quality (ICQ) and system quality (SQ) of a finished website on attitude toward a finished website (AFW). We propose that donors with greater levels of helper's high are more influenced by SQ, but less influenced by ICQ and ATW. We tested our predictions using a mixed between-within subject experimental design involving 536 subjects. The results provided support for all hypotheses. This study extends the ELM by incorporating the anchoring process and introducing charity-specific elaboration motivation. This study also contributes to the literature by examining the multiple roles postulate that has not received adequate attention in prior research.