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In this study, the authors sought to investigate how the implicit social ties of both project owners and potential backers are associated with crowdfunding project success.

Drawing on social ties theory and factors that affect crowdfunding success, in this research, the authors developed a model to study how project owners' and potential backers' implicit social ties are associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The proposed model was empirically tested with crowdfunding data collected from Kickstarter and social media data collected from Twitter. The authors performed the test using an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model with fixed effects.

The authors found that project owners' implicit social ties (specifically, their social media activities, degree centrality and betweenness centrality) are significantly and positively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. Meanwhile, potential project backers' implicit social ties (their social media activities and degree centrality) are negatively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The authors also found that project size moderates the effects of project owners' social media activities on projects' degrees of success.

This work contributes to the literature on crowdfunding by investigating how the implicit social ties of both potential backers and project owners on social media are associated with crowdfunding project success. This study extends the previous research on social ties' roles in explaining crowdfunding project success by including implicit social ties, while the literature explored only explicit social ties.

The economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic seriously jeopardized small businesses. To survive, many small businesses turned to their networks by launching crowdfunding “rescue” campaigns, which were very successful in eliciting both funding and community support. This study aims to explain this success from the backers' perspective by addressing support intentions in uncertain times. The authors examine backers' paradoxical behavior by investigating the influence of ambiguity aversion (individual uncertainty), business-level uncertainty and environmental uncertainty on backers' intentions to support small businesses and the interaction of uncertainty with backers' well-being.

Survey data from 230 backers of small business rescue campaigns were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The findings indicate that ambiguity aversion negatively dominates backers' support intentions. However, under the mediating effect of well-being, business-level and environmental uncertainties positively impact backers' intentions, whereas ambiguity aversion becomes non-significant.

Uncertainties are supposed to have a negative influence on individual well-being. By contrast, this study shows that backers' well-being is influenced by the context of the crowdfunding campaign. Uncertain conditions can provide value in addition to the benefits gained by backers from supporting crowdfunding campaigns.

Despite the critical contribution of serial backers in advancing crowdfunding volumes, few studies have addressed the phenomenon of serial backing. Research on the motivations of backers suggests that cognitive antecedents influence pledging in crowdfunding projects according to the theory of planned behavior. However, intrinsic factors associated with different dimensions of well-being may also explain crowdfunding support. This study seeks to advance the understanding of drivers of serial backing by combining the theory of planned behavior and the theory of well-being.

The study draws on survey data from 336 serial backers, complemented by objective data on the number of campaigns and amounts invested by backers from Headstart, the largest crowdfunding platform in Israel. The research model is tested using structural equation modeling.

The findings indicate that the well-being of serial backers mediates the impact of attitude, subjective norms and social norms on their loyalty. However, while loyalty can be explained by elements of both theories, it does not translate into actual serial backing behavior.

This study is the first to systematically explore serial backers' motivations in crowdfunding and the influence of these motivations on their actual behavior. It combines two previously separate theories, the theory of planned behavior and the theory of well-being.

Social interaction in comment sections has become a key factor for backers' decision making in crowdfunding platforms. However, current research on the two-way social interaction in crowdfunding is insufficient, and there exist inconsistent conclusions. This study focuses on the social interaction between creators and backers and explores its influence on the successful exit of crowdfunding projects.

The extended Cox model is used for the empirical analysis of 1,988 crowdfunding projects on the Modian (www.modian.com) platform, a crowdfunding platform for cultural and creative projects in China. The two-way social interaction is reflected in comment quantity and sentiment, as well as reply rate.

Results reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between comment quantity/sentiment and the successful exit of crowdfunding projects. This relationship is strengthened by high reply rate.

This study focuses on comment quantity and sentiment. The inverted U-shaped results reconcile previous conclusions. Replies from creators are regarded as a separate factor, and their moderating role is explained. The study research proves the importance of social interaction in crowdfunding platforms and provides suggestions for backers, creators and platform managers.

Earlier research into crowdfunding adoption has drawn on social psychology, trust, signaling and well-being theories. Despite its wide appeal and use, the technology acceptance model (TAM) has received little attention in terms of explaining the adoption of crowdfunding platforms. The current study examines the applicability of two versions of this framework: the original TAM1 and the extended TAM2 frameworks.

Data were collected through a survey distributed to the users of Finland's leading reward crowdfunding website, Mesenaatti, who have backed crowdfunding campaigns previously. The authors employed structural equation modelling (SEM–lavaan package) and conducted a series of quality tests to alleviate concerns with certain biases.

Analyses of 556 observations exhibit support for all hypotheses underlying both TAM frameworks, with two exceptions. Contrary to expectations, voluntariness does not moderate the effect of subjective norms on contribution intentions, and the effect of perceived ease-of-use is primarily mediated by perceived usefulness, rather than directly influencing intentions.

First, the study extends the generalizability of TAM to the context of crowdfunding and with respect to financial contribution behavior. Second, it shows that backers' perceptions of platform usefulness and ease-of-use are important antecedents of crowdfunding contribution behavior, and that the former exerts greater influence than the latter. Third, it further clarifies the influences of relevant antecedents of crowdfunding backers' contribution intentions and behaviors. Specifically, the authors show that experience only weakly moderates the influence of subjective norms on contribution intentions, and voluntariness does not moderate this association. The authors discuss explanations for these findings and their implications for research and practice.

The new age of entrepreneurs recognizes crowdfunding as an innovative and effective means of obtaining funding from backers. However, attracting backers is challenging and related scholarly knowledge lacking. Therefore, this study investigates the diverse factors influencing backer funding intention in reward-based crowdfunding.

This study conducted an online survey of 401 registered backers from two reward-based crowdfunding platforms in Taiwan. Data were analyzed using covariance-based structural equation modeling.

Results show that entrepreneur activeness has a negative effect on perceived risk but positively, while entrepreneur activeness and platform interactivity have a positive effect on backer engagement and backer value creation. Although it had no significant impact on backer engagement, project novelty positively influenced backer value creation. Perceived risk had no influence on either backer engagement or backer value creation. Backer engagement positively influenced backer value creation and backer funding intention, with the former having a positive impact on the latter.

This study provides a multi-perceptual lens by proposing an integration of diverse factors such as entrepreneurial- (entrepreneur activeness), project- (project novelty and perceived risk) and platform-related characteristics (platform interactivity) as antecedents to backer funding intention. By integrating a service-dominant logic perspective into the stimulus-organism-response model, this study highlights the essence of value creation by perceiving backers as value co-creators.

While crowdfunding provides a novel method for entrepreneurs and startups to raise funding from consumers, a high percentage of crowdfunding projects fail to achieve their funding goals. This study aims to investigate the impact of early backers on crowdfunding success (i.e. reaching funding goals) by considering their social and geographic peer influences.

The author constructed a social network and a geographic network of crowdfunding backers based on a data set from Kickstarter.com and used closeness centrality to quantify the network positions of early backers.

For project categories with low completion uncertainty, early backers who were socially closer to their peers led to a higher chance of success. However, such an impact declines for projects with higher uncertainty. On the other hand, for project categories with high completion uncertainty, early backers who were geographically closer to their peers led to a higher chance of success. Still, such an impact declines for projects with lower uncertainty.

This paper contributes to the literature by investigating the peer influence between socially and geographically related consumers on a crowdfunding platform. The findings provide managerial implications for crowdfunding project creators to target the right crowd.

Building a cycling route is an interesting example of sustainable, environmentally friendly leisure and tourism project and this also fosters innovation in eco-friendly transport options. Financial resources must be found to achieve these ambitious goals and crowdfunding could be the answer. The study analyses the factors that influence potential backers' decisions to contribute to the fundraising campaign.

A Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (FsQCA) was applied to elaborate a map of factors that could influence the process of the crowd's contribution to a crowdfunding round for supporting the enhancement of a cycling route. The factors taken into account were the motivations to contribute, the crowdfunder's features and the dynamics of the fundraising campaign.

The results demonstrate the strategic role played by rewards in the design of a crowdfunding round for a sustainable tourism and leisure project. The results also add more insights by considering backers' attitudes to rewards.

Understanding the factors that can influence the decision to pledge in the tourism and leisure context has extremely valuable implications for tourism businesses developing the business idea and associated capital raising strategies. The study also has practical implications for all institutions trying to foster innovation in eco-friendly transport, particularly in promoting more cycling and improving the image of cycling in the culture.

The study is a step forward in understanding the factors that lead backers to support a sustainable project in the tourism and leisure context and the related dynamics of the crowdfunding round.

This study aims to establish the shape of investment dynamics in equity crowdfunding to better understand backer behavior.

This study provides insights into when backers invest in successful funding campaigns. It uses t-tests to compare differences in means between observation windows during successful funding campaigns. It is based on 4,938 transactions from 61 campaigns, focusing on the first and last tail ends.

In contrast to previous findings, the current investment dynamics seem more U-shaped than L-shaped. This supports previous findings about a strong start but also suggests a late collective attention effect. The strength is higher at the first tail end. However, differences in the later tail ends are statistically significant and emphasize the presence of late investment activities, especially in crowded or less complex campaigns.

These findings emphasize the importance of signaling during the entire funding window. This encourages platforms to invest in user-friendly functionalities that guide entrepreneurs and help backers when investing in successful campaigns.

This study improves the understanding of backer behavior and suggests changing investment dynamics in equity crowdfunding. In addition, this pattern contrasts with previous findings on dynamic collective attention effects in rich digitally informative markets, implying two attention effects when uncertainty is high.

Sustainability-oriented projects are prevalent on crowdfunding platforms nowadays. The relationship between crowdfunding and sustainability has attracted the attention of many scholars. This study aims to examine the effects of perceived sustainability orientation on value-co-creation behavior from the perspective of backers and explore the mediation effects of three psychological factors: perceived affective reaction, perceived self-effectiveness and perceived risk.

The study recruits 455 backers to evaluate 100 projects on a crowdfunding platform. Structural equation modeling based on partial least squares is used to analyze data and test the hypotheses.

The results show that perceived sustainability orientation influences value-co-creation behavior through perceived affective reaction and self-effectiveness. Furthermore, perceived sustainability orientation impacts participation behavior through perceived risk.

Our study mainly focuses on sustainability-oriented and reward-based crowdfunding projects. Future research can examine other types of projects and other crowdfunding platforms.

These findings can provide implications for project creators to improve the values co-created with backers in future sustainability-oriented projects. Furthermore, the findings can provide implications for backers and help them evaluate crowdfunding projects.

The existing studies are mostly concerned with project creators’ perspectives. This paper is one of the few to investigate how a project’s sustainability orientation influences backers’ psychological factors and value-co-creation behavior.