People don't change, their priorities do: Evidence of value homophily for disaster relief

Earlier studies on crowdfunding markets show that a crisis increases the charitable funding for people affected by the crisis. However, these studies fail to explain whether such an increase is purely because of the "awareness of need," or, otherwise, there are some behavioral mechanisms associated with disaster relief fundraising. To address this gap, we theoretically and empirically explore the role of value homophily in shifting lending priorities in online prosocial platforms. Considering the full spectrum of cultural influences, we develop the concept of "culturalist choice homophily," where value-based similarities emerge based on the culturally-motivated behaviors and "historicist choice homophily," where value-based similarities emerge based on similarities in historical-cultural barriers. We hinge on the Arab Spring crisis in a Difference-in-Difference (DID) setting to test our hypotheses. We show that the Arab Spring crisis increased charitable funding from lenders with high emancipative values and similar colonial histories.