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The wide development of digital platforms permitted the birth of new financing modalities, namely, crowdfunding, where the crowd of individuals and investors can supply the necessary financial resources for venture creation and growth. While the extant literature has focused on analyzing the dynamics and features of crowdfunding campaigns, few studies have focused on understanding how crowd investors decide which ventures to invest in and which factors influence their decision-making process. Due to this gap, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors influencing the choice to invest in an equity crowdfunding campaign, by defining a set of indicators useful to evaluate the risk of the campaign.

An empirical research study of Italian equity crowdfunding campaigns has been conducted to identify quantitative indicators useful for evaluating the risk in a crowdfunding campaign.

Findings demonstrate that the risk indicators proposed to represent important gauges that investors can usefully consider ex ante to assess the degree of riskiness of the investment in the equity crowdfunding campaign.

The limitations of the study regarding the size of the sample that is small due to the necessity to extract enough information in pre and post-equity campaigns. Also, the lack of historical data is another limitation.

The originality of the studies relies on the proposal of quantitative indicators for the evaluation of the risk in equity crowdfunding campaigns for “crowd” investors to reduce information asymmetries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the links between investment activity and personal contacts for small- and medium-sized firms with public officials at the subnational level in Russia.

A list-experiment design, using a survey of 21,000 Russian firms in 2017, was used to evaluate the importance of personal connections with officials for conducting business.

A total of 27% of firms without investment and 37% with investment considered personal connections with officials an important factor for doing business. The importance of such contacts was lower in regions with a better investment climate. However, a higher proportion of firms were likely to invest in the regions where higher importance was placed on political connections. Therefore, in Russia in the mid-2010s, investment from politically connected firms did not crowd out investment from other firms.

Although the available data did not allow causality to be defined, the research shows that political connections are important for investors in emerging markets and that the importance of political connections diminishes with improvement in the business climate.

This paper provides a quantitative estimate of the relationship between political connections and firm investment in Russia, an example of large emerging economy. This relationship is moderated by institutional quality at the subnational level. The results provide empirical support for the theory of limited access orders elaborated by North et al. (2009), and stress the importance of rents and their productive utilization for the development of emerging economies.

This paper aims to provide a multidisciplinary framework that allows an integrated understanding of reasons of success or failure in equity crowdfunding (ECF), a Fintech digital innovation of the traditional entrepreneurial finance, defining a future research agenda.

A systematic literature review (SLR) has been conducted on 127 documents extracted from two multidisciplinary repositories (Elsevier’s Scopus and Clarivate Analytics Web of Science) for the period between 2015 and early 2022. After a systematized series of inclusion and exclusion criteria, in line with the objectives and conceptual boundaries, a final list of 32 peer-reviewed articles written in English was analyzed by the authors through a meta-synthesis and thematic analysis to identify the key themes and dominant concepts.

Results show that the body of literature is recent and fast growing. The proposed integrative framework of existing research indicates that the outcome of an ECF campaign is related to signals conveyed by entrepreneurs in the form of hard information (firm characteristics, financial information, business characteristics and project description) and soft information (intellectual capital, human capital, social capital and social media network), catalyzed by digital media that facilitate also personal interactions between entrepreneurs and investors. Similarly, external factors (investors and campaign characteristics, with the fundamental role of ECF platform managers in building trust between entrepreneurs and investors) allow for the alleviation of information asymmetries. The present study sheds light on which signal mechanisms are decisive in improving the outcome, taking into consideration various disciplines which follow different but complementary perspectives.

Entrepreneurs should adapt to the transition toward the digital era, exploiting alternative financial instruments and learning effective signaling strategies, within a large variety of skills requested. Platform managers can obtain more focused information on selected entrepreneurial projects more efficiently.

Although it is fast-growing, the field of research is very recent, still fragmented and limited to the perspective/discipline followed. This SLR is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first multidisciplinary and integrative analysis of reasons that motivates success, or failure, of an equity-based crowdfunding campaign. The digital nature of ECF encourages future research to move toward more pioneering and unconventional theories and research methods. Hence, the authors add to the existing literature by proposing future patterns of research based on an integration of highly technological skills and behavioral/psychological approaches.

This paper reviews recent advances in the empirical literature of FinTech and household finance.

We survey the effects of FinTech on three different aspects of household finance: payments, lending and portfolio decisions. Specifically, we examine the impact of digital payments, mobile money, FinTech lending, marketplace lending, robo-advising and crowd-funding.

Studies suggest that FinTech has positively benefited households by increasing consumption and borrowing. This allows them to smoothen their consumption across time. Furthermore, there is an improvement in their portfolio diversification. Nonetheless, there is also evidence that certain households overconsume and borrow beyond their means.

Despite the importance of this topic, there has been a lack of empirical evidence until recently. In this paper, we take stock of the empirical evidence in the literature through the lens of household finance

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the nature and characteristics of crowd logistics business models. Using this evaluation, a new concept for a sustainable implementation of crowd logistics services is proposed.

The Design Science process was followed to develop the proposed crowd logistics business model concept. The data are derived from expert interviews and a document-based data analysis of 13 companies.

Four relevant steps that companies should follow to implement sustainable crowd logistics services are identified. Open research questions are also identified and guide five research tasks, which may lead to a greater understanding of this emerging field.

The present research is based on data from companies operating in Germany. The holistic approach gives a broad overview but lacks detailed descriptions.

Managers can use the four steps and the crowd logistics business model concept to plan future activities (e.g. new service provision). These steps increase the understanding, awareness and knowledge of opportunities and risks of specific crowd logistics services.

This paper provides initial insights into social changes in terms of drivers for the use of crowd logistics services. However, further research is needed to capture the social implications in detail.

Crowd logistics is an emerging concept, and this paper is one of the first dealing with this topic generally and the first providing an analysis of crowd logistics business models. The developed concept includes implications for practice in the forms of common, and best practices, and science in the form of open research questions and tasks. Overall, the present research provides new insights into this emerging topic.

This study aims to investigate the influence of various risk factors, specifically investment risk, legal risk and technology risk, on the decision of investors to invest in equity crowdfunding ventures in Malaysia.

A total of 169 valid responses out of a total of 195 questionnaires were distributed to individuals with prior knowledge of equity crowdfunding. The data from the responses are used to test the relationships using structural equation modeling partial least squares (SEM-PLS).

Investigation into the influence of risk factors on the willingness to support equity crowdfunding shows that investment risk and legal risk significantly influence the decision to support equity crowdfunding ventures, but technology risk does not. However, while the influence of investment risk is negative, legal risk is found to have a positive influence.

This study is important as, to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to empirically test the relationship between the various risks inherent in equity crowdfunding investments and the decision to invest. The study is also important to entrepreneurs and start-ups as it provides evidence that while the equity crowdfunding investment community follows the norms of investment, i.e. lower risk is preferred, stricter laws and regulations governing equity crowdfunding may not be needed or may only be relevant in countries where there are more retail, unsophisticated investors.

The over 125-year-old economic miracle called the Corporation is suddenly shaken in its foundations. The corporate business world is rapidly changing not only in the USA, but also across the globe. The front covers of business magazines and dailies, once dominated by names and faces of “Corporate Giants,” are now being replaced with success stories of great startups and small business entrepreneurs. The reasons for these radical changes progressively reveal the imperfections existing in the current corporation and the business boardroom paradigm. For over a century, huge corporate entities spawned by capitalism have established and entrenched themselves in their respective industry arenas and have since been ruling the world, dominating money, capital, cash, and market opportunity. Once they provided solutions to people’s employment and career needs, they have made a fortune for themselves thereby. In the course of their evolution, the businesses have transformed into corporations, seeking people’s money for doing business and, in turn, giving a share of proportionate ownership to the investor people in the form of dividends and capital gains. Such a brilliant method of raising capital has empowered the corporations to grow and expand beyond physical and political boundaries. Today, however, the corporations are run by the BOD, most of whom are representing gigantic promoter-investor institutions. That is, the main administrative role is now replaced by private equity firms and hedge funds that provide the required capital but who also exert undue pressures on CEOs to focus on short-term strategies that have massive profitability potential, thus defying the usual business management model and paradigm the CEOs were trained for in B-schools. The massive CEO exodus that has migrated from the traditional corporations to newly created startups and smaller business entrepreneurial ventures has also made the corporation an endangered species. In such a market turbulence, how do we redefine, redesign, and reinvent the morally embattled corporation? This chapter explores solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the determinants and the operational aspects of real estate crowdfunding (RECF henceforth). It addresses RECF growth, drivers and platforms in light of modern digital technology.

A comparison with traditional real estate funding is provided, and the ease and advantages that RECF offers to real estate investors are analyzed. The risks and rewards of crowdfunding in general and RECF in particular are also addressed.

Inasmuch as RECF appears novel and disruptive, research in this paper dates RECF back to the seventieth century. The findings thus posit that RECF is an evolutionary process while it is currently transformative and disruptive.

This is a novel look into RECF, particularly in terms of data, analyses and evaluation of alternatives.