CROWDFUNDING ILLUMINATED: A MULTI-METHOD INVESTIGATION

Tanya Young Beaulieu

Crowdfunding, a new innovative technology-enabled process, has the potential to disrupt the capital market space. Empowered by the Internet, crowdfunding allows the crowd to decide what ventures are worth supporting thereby changing who and how the gatekeepers of the capital markets operate. Although a world-wide multi-billion dollar industry, crowdfunding research is only starting to emerge. In this dissertation, I present three essays concentrating on issues surrounding crowdfunding in order to illuminate the interaction between technology and social systems. A multidisciplinary review of crowdfunding literature reflected a lack of cohesion and consistency across disciplines. In the first essay, I address this confusion by clarifying terminology and defining pertinent stakeholders. Guided by typology research, six distinct crowdfunding business models are defined. The essay concludes with a proposed research framework based on identified stakeholders and crowdfunding business models. The second essay focuses on backers’ contribution behavior in rewards crowdfunding. Using a competing models approach, three motivations for contribution - altruism, economic value, and identification are identified and tested. Based on these results, a unified model of crowdfunding contribution behavior is hypothesized and tested with new survey data. The resulting model reflects the role of website quality as an antecedent, as well as the relationships and impact of quality, risk, value, identification, and helper’s high on contribution decisions. Driven by the unified model, I conclude by proposing implications for crowdfunding website providers. Communication within a rewards crowdfunding campaign occurs almost exclusively online. Consequently, understanding how communication patterns lead to action is critical to the success of technology-mediated environments. In the third essay, I draw on theories of discourse analysis to understand how meaning and interaction lead to action, and how this differs between successful and unsuccessful campaigns. I first develop a discourse-theoretic tool, the Communication Action Map (CAM), to untangle and visualize online communication. The CAM provides an underlying structure for analysis and identification of exchange patterns. I found that successful campaigns have longer and more varied forms of co-construction, and resolve trouble through negotiation and compromise. Unsuccessful campaigns do not fully participate in co-construction discourse, have unresolved trouble, or are absent of trouble.

CROWDFUNDING ILLUMINATED: A MULTI-METHOD INVESTIGATION

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