Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore how linguistic style and message substance influence persuasion in civic crowdfunding marketplaces in which written narrative pitch become a vital communication to attract private contributions to public goods and services. Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), the authors operationalize the linguistic style of the narrative pitch as language power and message substance as issue-relevant argument quality. In this paper, the authors examine how characteristics of both style and message are related to the outcome of civic crowdfunded projects.

The data on civic crowdfunding projects were retrieved from Spacehive, the platform that dedicated mainly to civic projects ranging from community programs, social-oriented enterprises, to infrastructure or facility development. Each of the narrative samples is analyzed using a computerized text analysis package called the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to extract the features of the linguistic style and message substance in the narratives. The logistic regression models are estimated to assess the impact of both linguistic style and message substance on crowdfunding decisions.

The results show that funding outcomes can be improved with psychological language dimensions (i.e. positive affective and perceptual language). However, extensive use of social language does not help project creators to increase their chance of funding performance; but instead, such language reduces the likelihood of project success. Additionally, message substance or issue-relevant information such as money and risk language influences funding outcome.

Very few empirical studies investigated the differential effects of language style and message substance on funding performance of crowdfunding campaigns. The authors draw upon the dual process of persuasion as a theoretical base to identify a comprehensive set of linguistic style and message substance and to examine the role of such features in an emerging civic crowdfunding market. This study advances the application of the dual process in ELM by identifying and examining distinct persuasive cues originating from linguistics styles and message contents.

There have been many innovations in public finance in the 21st century to address increasing budget constraints and increasing demands from government. One innovation has been civic crowd-funding which began in 2009. This is predicated on the voluntary commitment of funds by individual and institutional donors and investors for specific projects. This paper explores this new approach to funding capital projects and grounds it within a discussion of the Voluntary Theory of Public Finance. There is a lack of research on civic crowd-funding and a lack of theoretical approaches to it. This paper draws these connections and develops future directions of research that includes the continuing application of this approach, the increasing engagement of citizens in the administrative process of government and increasing budget constraints.

This article aims to investigate the status of and the trends in the intertwining of crowdfunding and innovation literature by identifying, evaluating and synthesizing the findings from previous research. This paper provides a bibliometric meta-analysis of the already substantial and growing literature on innovation and crowdfunding research.

Using a bibliometric approach, this research scrutinizes all articles that include terms related to “crowdfunding” and “innovation” (in their title, abstract or keywords) in Elsevier’s Scopus database. VosViewer and Bibliometrix package in R have been used to analyse 150 articles.

The results suggest that there are three main research clusters in the innovation and crowdfunding literature. The first cluster highlights the role of crowdfunding in fostering radical and incremental innovation. The second cluster focuses on the concept of openness and its effect on innovation in crowdfunding campaigns, while the third cluster explains the role of platforms’ innovation in crowdfunding success.

Taking a holistic perspective, this contribution advances new knowledge on the intertwining of crowdfunding and innovation research fields. It implies that crowdfunding is facilitating the flow of knowledge between different stakeholders, including project initiators and crowd investors, among others, as they all benefit from open innovation platforms.

In the years following the 2009 recession, local governments in the US have struggled to adequately maintain and manage infrastructure projects. As a result, community organizations are using new tactics to increase social and financial support for specific projects in the hopes of capturing local government attention and motivating infrastructure project delivery. This chapter explores how one community organization initiated a consensus movement by using civic crowdfunding to mobilize resources for a specific infrastructure project. Based on a matched pairs case study with two protected bike lane (PBL) projects in Denver, CO, USA (one that used consensus movement tactics and one that did not), this analysis focuses on the emergence of a consensus movement and its implications for project stakeholders. As a consensus movement supporting infrastructure, I argue that the project-based nature is important in defining movement success. Additionally, I argue that the relationship between the social movement organization and the state is more important than a typical consensus movement because infrastructure delivery requires a high level of state coordination and resources. The implications of using a consensus movement to support a specific infrastructure project point to shifting roles between social movement organization and the state.

The paper discusses the rationale for a widespread reliance on Codes of Conduct (CoC) in European crowdfunding through the lenses of economic theories of self-regulation. By analysing the institutional design of CoCs in crowdfunding, the paper illustrates the differences in their regulatory context, inclusiveness, monitoring and enforcement. It offers the first systematic overview of substantial rules of CoCs in crowdfunding.

A comparative case study of nine CoCs in Europe is used to illustrate differences in their institutional design and discern the economic purpose of the CoC.

The institutional design of different CoCs in Europe mainly supports voluntary theories of self-regulation. In particular, the theory of reputation commons has the most explanatory power. The substantial rules of CoC in different markets show the potential sources of market failure through the perspectives of platforms.

CoCs appear in various regulatory, cultural, and industry contexts of different countries. Some of the institutional design features of CoC might be a result of these characteristics.

Crowdfunding associations wishing to develop their own CoC may learn from a comparative overview of key provisions.

For governments in Europe, contemplating creating or revising bespoke crowdfunding regimes, the paper identifies areas where crowdfunding platforms perceive market failure.

This paper is the first systematic study of self-regulatory institutions in European crowdfunding. The paper employs a theoretical framework for the analysis of self-regulation in crowdfunding and provides a comparison of a regulatory context, inclusiveness, monitoring and enforcement of different CoCs in Europe.

This paper aims to investigate the intersection between crowdfunding (CF), open innovation (OI) and responsible innovation (RI) and identify the emerging trends and gaps in research and new paths for CF research in the future. In addition, this paper proposes a conceptual framework and propositions.

This paper is structured in line with the systematic literature review protocol. After reading all the titles, keywords and abstracts, 172 papers focused on OI and RI were selected for this research. Finally, 27 papers that are based on dimensions related to responsible OI were selected for the study.

Due to CF's multidisciplinary nature, the scientific literature on the role of CF in endorsing responsible OI for shared value co-creation appears fragmented and redundant. Several emerging trends and gaps of research and new paths for CF research in the future arise regarding research methodology and theoretical perspective.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study investigating the intersection between CF OI and RI.

Crowdfunding can be an effective fundraising vehicle to independent restaurants to overcome fundraising limitations due to its small-size and high risk. A few studies have identified contents of communication for successful crowdfunding, yet missing is on how to say. The purpose of this paper is to investigate linguistics styles that are effective in pitches in restaurant crowdfunding.

The study analyzed 500 restaurant crowdfunding projects listed on Kickstarter.com that is one of the most popular crowdfunding platforms with sizable restaurant projects. By text analysis, this study identifies four linguistic categories – concrete, precise, interactive and language with low psychological distancing – from the project descriptions. A binominal linear regression analysis identified effective language styles that increases success of restaurant crowdfunding.

Drawing on the language expectancy theory and uncertainty reduction theory, this study found that project descriptions that are concrete and delivering stories with fewer usage of first person pronouns are likely to succeed in restaurant fundraising. Interactive style was counter-effective while preciseness of language did not affect funding success significantly. Findings further reveal the roles of non-linguistic attributes shown in the project pitches.

Despite the increasing practice of restaurant crowdfunding and good matches with small- and medium-sized restaurants’ needs, scant research has been conducted. Notably absent from the research is work on linguistic styles that are effective in restaurant crowdfunding. This study extends the prior literature by investigating how restaurant entrepreneurs should communicate with potential crowdfunders to make crowdfunding successful in the restaurant context. Simply knowing what are important does not provide holistic help to restaurant entrepreneurs; they also should know how to communicate well.

The findings of this study are important for restaurant entrepreneurs who need to present their projects and communicate effectively with potential investors online. Based on the study’s findings, crowdfunding platforms could enhance their project posting systems by developing algorithm that automatically measures language cues embedded in a project description and providing suggestions to improve persuasiveness of languages to maximize funding success for restaurant projects.

Scant research has been conducted in the restaurant crowdfunding; prior crowdfunding literature has focused on the projects other than restaurants such as technology, design and film. This study is the first that uncovers the role of the linguistic styles for the specific context of restaurant crowdfunding. This study sheds the light on the critical communication strategies used by small-sized restaurant entrepreneurs on crowdfunding platform.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how online crowdfunding is strategically applied to artistic productions featuring strong social and cultural values, exploring potential and risks of networking value creation and community engagement. Mission-driven initiatives and their crowdfunding campaigns are analyzed through platform society framework (van Dijk, 2019), considering the business models and marketing strategies that support the scope and intentions of a variety of agents involved within the online networks.

A qualitative multiple case-study approach is adopted to sample and analyze in depth significant examples from the most representative crowdsponsoring platforms in Portugal. Agents’ perspectives and practices are collected through semi-structured interviews with campaign creators and platform managers, and complemented by the design of specific business model canvas (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010) adapted to crowdfunding projects. Communication strategies and social media marketing are considered, metering agent’s profile and comparing performance and online engagement through profile and official pages observation.

Main findings point out that a crowdfunding campaign requires to set up a specific business model and marketing strategy articulation that go beyond the traditional cultural enterprises differentiation criteria, hybridizing them through experience-led marketing logic, extended product conceptualization and a critical cultural entrepreneurship approach. Community engagement operations need to be structured and integrated through online and offline social networks activities, and the value creation is build through shared meaning construction and interpretation between creators and backers, with the support of others agents involved within crowdfunding value network. It also states that the conceptualization of crowdfunding phenomenon as a service ecosystem (Quero and Ventura, 2019) could be extended, to comprehend other actors and power position within intermediation processes, namely, social network and social media platforms corporations, online payments services, online users, legacy media entities and others stakeholders as matchfunding organizations and partners for products’ development and distribution.

The research design could be improved by adding more quantitative and social analytics data or an international cases comparison to complete these preliminary results.

The findings could assist arts and media managers as well as cultural agents to adapt their strategies to emergent business and marketing models, strongly influenced by dominant barging positions in the value chain held by new digital intermediaries, and to better explore product levels to strengthen interactions and engagement with communities of interest and supporters for the creation of value.

This paper contributes to elaborate a more accurate scientific knowledge and critical perspective about crowfunding system evolution, concerning both individual and collective agencies, and their implication for different types of agents and networked individuals between institutions (Dutton, 2009).

This study is unique, as it adopts a multidisciplinary approach and a comprehensive analysis of Portuguese crowdsponsoring phenomenon, and it offers a valid contribution to the analysis of crowdfunding as value-creation network.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of creator credibility and backer endorsement on the levels of donation to crowdfunding campaigns in a focal muslim community and to determine the success factors of projects in developing and developed countries.

This research adopts a quantitative approach, utilizing 223 crowdfunding projects from LaunchGood to examine the expected connections. The crowdfunding projects in the distinctive data set (Ramadan) are similar, permitting exploration of the role of creator credibility and backer endorsement in a unique context of religious-based crowdfunding activity.

Creators’ credibility and backers’ endorsements are decisive factors in crowdfunding success. Results from an additional test related to location (developing and developed countries) suggest that creators’ credibility is more important than backers’ endorsements, especially in developing countries.

The projects used in the data set are homogenous and take place in a specific context. The limited number of available observations influences the testing function and capacity of the models and variables. Further, the investigation is related to a specific community, so might not be applicable to all communities.

Potential supporters from the community are vital for the success of crowdfunding projects. This study informs campaign efforts in a religious community by stressing the importance of creators’ credibility and backers’ endorsements. The study also sheds light on factors that affect crowdfunding success in developing and developed countries.

This study helps to explain successful crowdfunding practices in donation-based crowdfunding projects within a religious community context. Results improve scholars’ ability to comprehend individuals’ supporting behavior, providing empirical evidence of creators’ credibility and backers’ endorsement on project success. The study also addresses the determinants of crowdfunding success in developing and developed countries.

Financial technologies, also known as “FinTech,” have brought disruptive changes to virtually every aspect of financial services and are becoming increasingly important in the world economic system. The purpose of this paper is to proffer a bird view of some recent studies in the key research areas of FinTech, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, crowdfunding and then to summarize the key contributions made by all the six papers in this special issue.

A literature review approach is adopted, and the summary shows that most types of FinTech innovations generate positive value to innovators, financial customers and the society. The current implications and future directions are explored based on theoretical and empirical analyses.

The benefits from and determinants of FinTech applications vary across different financial sectors. Together the summary of this special issue suggests that there is substantial value creation in further exploring the dynamics, mechanisms and social consequences of FinTech.

This study helps to extend knowledge by summarizing the current practices, proffering new insights and watching out emerging trends of financial technologies, and to shed light on a variety of subjects of interest to practitioners, academics and policy makers by suggesting for the future research topics.