{"title":"How signal intensity of altruistic and strategic motivation affects crowdfunding performance? Matching among funders and platform types","authors":"Hongke Zhao , Yaxian Wang , Hao Wei","doi":"10.1016/j.elerap.2025.101528","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Crowdfunding has gained significant scholarly attention, yet existing research primarily focuses on single-platform studies, limiting the generalizability of findings. We argue that investment motivations vary across platform types, influencing the effectiveness of altruistic and quality signals on crowdfunding performance. Using 114,095 projects from Indiegogo (reward-based) and 1,199,908 loan projects from Kiva (lending-based), we first conduct separate analyses within each platform to examine the impact of these signals. We then compare the marginal effects across platforms to assess how platform structure influences backer decision-making. Our results show that quality signals consistently enhance crowdfunding success but have a stronger influence in reward-based platforms, while the effect of altruistic signals varies, enhancing performance in lending-based platforms but diminishing it in reward-based platforms. Moreover, we identify a reciprocal inhibitory interaction between quality and altruistic signals, suggesting that emphasizing one type of signal may weaken the effectiveness of the other by diverting backers’ attention and influencing how they evaluate the project. These findings underscore the importance of platform differentiation in crowdfunding research and highlight the need to move beyond single-platform studies. Our study offers practical insights for crowdfunding initiators on how to tailor their campaigns based on platform-specific investor behavior.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50541,"journal":{"name":"Electronic Commerce Research and Applications","volume":"73 ","pages":"Article 101528"},"PeriodicalIF":6.3000,"publicationDate":"2025-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Electronic Commerce Research and Applications","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567422325000535","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Crowdfunding has gained significant scholarly attention, yet existing research primarily focuses on single-platform studies, limiting the generalizability of findings. We argue that investment motivations vary across platform types, influencing the effectiveness of altruistic and quality signals on crowdfunding performance. Using 114,095 projects from Indiegogo (reward-based) and 1,199,908 loan projects from Kiva (lending-based), we first conduct separate analyses within each platform to examine the impact of these signals. We then compare the marginal effects across platforms to assess how platform structure influences backer decision-making. Our results show that quality signals consistently enhance crowdfunding success but have a stronger influence in reward-based platforms, while the effect of altruistic signals varies, enhancing performance in lending-based platforms but diminishing it in reward-based platforms. Moreover, we identify a reciprocal inhibitory interaction between quality and altruistic signals, suggesting that emphasizing one type of signal may weaken the effectiveness of the other by diverting backers’ attention and influencing how they evaluate the project. These findings underscore the importance of platform differentiation in crowdfunding research and highlight the need to move beyond single-platform studies. Our study offers practical insights for crowdfunding initiators on how to tailor their campaigns based on platform-specific investor behavior.
期刊介绍:
Electronic Commerce Research and Applications aims to create and disseminate enduring knowledge for the fast-changing e-commerce environment. A major dilemma in e-commerce research is how to achieve a balance between the currency and the life span of knowledge.
Electronic Commerce Research and Applications will contribute to the establishment of a research community to create the knowledge, technology, theory, and applications for the development of electronic commerce. This is targeted at the intersection of technological potential and business aims.