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To explain the new Crowdfunding Regulation to market participants and to describe the impact of the Crowdfunding Regulation on current crowdfunding business models in the European Union.

This article provides an overview of the new Crowdfunding Regulation with a focus on the provisions concerning cross-border services (“European Passport”) and the new authorization requirements for crowdfunding service providers.

In particular the introduction of the European passport will open new funding sources for project owners. This together with the harmonized authorization requirements of crowdfunding service providers is expected to contribute to further growth of the crowdfunding market in the European Union. The Crowdfunding Regulation is a further step on the way to a Capital Markets Union in Europe and regulates crowdfunding for the first time on a European level.

The Crowdfunding Regulation does not cover all existing crowdfunding business models in Europe (e.g., consumer as project owners and qualified subordinated loans are exempted). Insofar, the rules of the Member States continue to apply with the consequence of a partial fragmentation of applicable regulations.

Expert guidance from experienced financial-services lawyer.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a preliminary explanation of “crowdfunding,” as defined in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, subject to more specific rules that will be issued by the SEC later in 2012.

The paper provides an introduction to crowdfunding followed by preliminary explanations of the criteria for securities offerings that are exempted from traditional registration, requirements for brokers or funding portals that serve as crowdfunding intermediaries, disclosure and other requirements for the issuing company, the types of companies that would be likely crowdfunding issuers, significant risks and pitfalls potential crowdfunding issuers need to consider, and the potential effects of crowdfunding on a company's prospects for later‐stage funding such as venture capital.

The success of crowdfunding will likely depend on whether the rules to be defined by the SEC allow for a lean, efficient process for early stage capital raising or a complicated set of rules that makes crowdfunding unappealing or costly to startups and small issuers.

The paper provides practical guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.

This study explores whether herd behavior exists for equity crowdfunding investors in China and whether this herding is rational.

Based on signaling theory and social learning theory, two hypotheses were proposed. This study employed two approaches to collect data. First, this paper analyzed 3,041 investments on an equity crowdfunding platform in China using Python programming and built a panel data model. Second, based on a unique experiment design, this study conducted several relevant herd behavior simulation experiments.

We found that investors in the Chinese equity crowdfunding market exhibit herd behavior and that this herding is rational. Project attributes play a negative role in moderating the relationship between the current investment amount and cumulative investments. Experimental results further support our findings.

This study contributes to the emerging literature on herding in crowdfunding by focusing on equity crowdfunding in China. We are the first to explore whether Chinese equity crowdfunding investors exhibit rational herding behavior. The study is also original in applying social learning theory to equity crowdfunding and in using both actual crowdfunding campaigns and experimental approaches to collect data. This study has valuable implications to practice.

Color psychology theory reveals that complex images with very varied palettes and many different colors are likely to be considered unattractive by individuals. Notwithstanding, web content containing social signals may be more attractive via the initiation of a social connection. This research investigates a predictive model blending variables from these theoretical perspectives to determine crowdfunding success.

The research is based on data from 176,614 Kickstarter projects. A number of machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques were employed to analyze the listing images for color complexity and the presence of people, while specific language features, including socialness, were measured in the listing text. Logistic regression was applied, controlling for several additional variables and predictive model was developed.

The findings supported the color complexity and socialness effects on crowdfunding success. The model achieves notable predictive value explaining 56.4% of variance. Listing images containing fewer colors and that have more similar colors are more likely to be crowdfunded successfully. Listings that convey greater socialness have a greater likelihood of being funded.

This investigation contributes a unique understanding of the effect of features of both socialness and color complexity on the success of crowdfunding ventures. A second contribution comes from the process and methods employed in the study, which provides a clear blueprint for the processing of large-scale analysis of soft information (images and text) in order to use them as variables in the scientific testing of theory.

Crowdfunding has emerged as an alternative financing tool and recently gained attention to foster entrepreneurial dynamism and innovation. The current research has identified the determinants impacting the behavioral intentions of entrepreneurs to use crowdfunding for financing their small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The current article is based on a cross-sectional research design. This research collected the data of 422 owners and managers of SMEs through self-administered questionnaires in the Indian National Capital Region (NCR). The responses were collected from July 17 to October 27, 2022. This article used “partial least squares structural equation modeling” (PLS-SEM) for data analysis.

This article offered a robust model with a high explanatory value of 66% of behavioral intention and 62.1% variance in crowdfunding use behavior. The finding also highlighted that performance expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, trialability and perceived value significantly impact behavioral intention. However, effort expectancy and perceived risk insignificantly influence behavioral intention. Notably, facilitating conditions, trialability and behavioral intention positively impact use behavior.

The results of this study will bridge the gap in empirical research on crowdfunding adoption, shedding light on why entrepreneurs hesitate to adopt crowdfunding for financing. Moreover, these results will offer strategic insights for crowdfunding managers and policymakers, aiding them in making informed decisions.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this pioneering study built the theoretical framework using three credible technology determinant models. The authors examined crowdfunding-specific contextual factors to improve understanding of the positive effect of technological orientation. This addition assists in strategically arranging entrepreneurs' fundraising conversations more efficiently.

Crowdfunding is an increasingly popular channel for project fundraising for entrepreneurial ventures. Such efforts require fundraisers to develop and manage a crowdfunding campaign over a period of time and several stages. Thus, the authors aim to identify the stages fundraisers go through in their crowdfunding campaign process and how their engagement evolves throughout this process.

Following a multiple case study research design analysing six successful campaigns, the current study suggests a taxonomy of stages the fundraisers go through in their crowdfunding campaign management process while identifying the types of engagement displayed and their relative intensity at each of these stages.

The study proposes a five-stage process framework (pre-launch, launch, mid-campaign, conclusion and post-campaign), accompanied by a series of propositions outlining the relative intensity of different types of engagement throughout this process. The authors show that engagement levels appear with high intensity at pre-launch, and to a lesser degree also at the post-launch stage while showing low intensity at the stages in between them. More specifically, cognitive and behavioural engagement are most prominent at the pre- and post-launch stages. Emotional engagement is highest during the launch, mid-launch and conclusion stages. And social engagement maintains moderate levels of intensity throughout the process.

This study focuses on the campaign process using engagement theory, thus identifying the differing engagement patterns throughout the dynamic crowdfunding campaign management process, not just in one part.

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.

Brand crowdfunding, launched through brands’ social media platforms, can provide a myriad of crowdfunding and branding benefits, such as strengthening brands’ social networks, validating product launches, generating mass exposure and enabling cocreation. Gamification positions brand crowdfunding as an exciting and joyful activity that more deeply engages prosumers. Anchored on resource-based theory, theory of planned behavior and service-dominant logic, this paper aims to develop a brand crowdfunding framework for established brands with insights from two emerging markets: China and India.

A deductive cross-sectional design is used to gather data from an established brand’s (e.g. Xiaomi) social media followers in China (n = 826) and India (n = 358), which is analyzed through PLSc-SEM.

The results reveal that social media brand engagement is an antecedent of brand crowdfunding participation, brand crowdfunding intention is a predictor of brand loyalty and gamification is a significant moderator in technology-oriented societies.

The paper develops a brand crowdfunding framework that provides insights on how established brands can leverage crowdfunding to enhance their new product development process. The results contribute to the social media brand engagement, crowdfunding, gamification and emerging markets literature.

Adopting a brand prominence perspective, this study aims to examine how textual and visual brand elements influence the success of crowdfunding campaigns for aftermarket offerings.

A Python-based Web scraper was used to collect data from 620 crowdfunding campaigns for aftermarket offerings hosted on Kickstarter. The linguistic inquiry and word count application programing interface was then used to analyze the linguistic aspects of these campaigns. A fixed effects regression model was used to evaluate the hypotheses.

Textual and visual brand prominence are positively associated with campaign success. Further, with some variations, both types of brand prominence augment the positive effects of narrative and graphic design elements on campaign success.

This study makes novel theoretical contributions to the literature on branding, crowdfunding and aftermarket products. The results also provide practical insights to aftermarket enterprises on creating compelling crowdfunding campaigns.

By analyzing the direct and synergistic effects of branding, narrative and graphic design elements on crowdfunding success, this study extends various literature streams and identifies several future research opportunities.

The purpose of this study is to analyse potential models of Islamic crowdfunding as an alternative financing option for micro-entrepreneurs in Malaysia. While crowdfunding has gained traction as an alternative funding source for businesses, it is unclear how far this concept can benefit a group of micro-entrepreneurs in Malaysia.

This study uses a qualitative research approach by using data collected through semi-structured interviews with several experts and practitioners in crowdfunding, Shariah and entrepreneurship. Prior to discussing the facets of the findings, the data were analysed based on a thematic approach.

The findings reveal that while previous works of related literature suggest crowdfunding as a viable alternative financing option for entrepreneurs and their businesses, in reality, its practical implementation presents challenges. Numerous micro-entrepreneurs need more training in the areas of management and marketing. Such concerns raise questions about their ability to attract potential project backers. With the proper selection of Shariah contracts and several approaches to risk management, Islamic crowdfunding can potentially become an alternative funding source for microbusinesses.

Given the exploratory nature of this study regarding the applicability of Islamic crowdfunding as an alternative fund for micro-entrepreneurs, its findings may not fully encompass Malaysia’s context because of the limited number of participants involved.

The findings of this study offer guidelines on how to implement Islamic crowdfunding for micro-entrepreneurs. Consequently, Islamic crowdfunding has the potential to alleviate the government’s burden of providing funds for micro-enterprises and enhance their skills and mentality to be more independent, creative and able to promote their products.

While Islamic crowdfunding can be an alternative opportunity for business enterprises and community-based projects, it promotes the spirit of cooperation and collaboration within society.

Although Islamic crowdfunding is a topic that has been discussed previously, empirical investigations in this area remain scarce, mainly through qualitative approaches. Distinguishing from prior literature, this study analyses several potential models of Islamic crowdfunding from the perspectives of experts, practitioners and related agencies for micro-entrepreneurs. Moreover, this study bridges insights from related literature so that they offer practical applications to support micro-entrepreneurs in Malaysia.