The experience matters: participation-related rewards increase the success chances of crowdfunding campaigns

Tobias Regner (1) , Paolo Crosetto (2)

1 Friedrich-Schiller-Universität = Friedrich Schiller University Jena [Jena, Germany]
2 GAEL - Laboratoire d'Economie Appliquée de Grenoble

Crowdfunding recently emerged as an alternative funding channel for start-ups, creative artists and social endeavors. On specialized web platforms, project creators ask the crowd for support and provide in return a set of rewards, modulated according to the amount of support pledged. Our study investigates the role of self- and social-image enhancing rewards in determining project success. Using data from 346 projects hosted by Startnext, the biggest crowdfunding platform in Germany, we show that providing higher shares of reward levels that let pledgers participate in and experience the project is correlated with project success.

Mots clés: crowdfunding; entrepreneurial finance; donations; reward levels; identity; self-image; social-image

Domaines: Economies et finances

Tobias Regner, Paolo Crosetto. The experience matters: participation-related rewards increase the success chances of crowdfunding campaigns. 2017. ⟨hal-01527150⟩