• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.141-161
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• 2016

Purpose As crowdfunding is a relatively recent phenomenon, determinants of successful crowdfunding with empirical data have been under-researched. Consequently, we examine the role of information- and behavior-based social interaction on the performance of crowdfunding projects, while investigating the motivational factor of goal achievement. Design/methodology/approach From February to August 2016, we collected panel data on 154 crowdfunding projects, which completed fundraising successfully on Tumblbug, a reward-based crowdfunding platform in Korea. In this study, we examine the roles of information-based social interaction (e.g., sharing information on a crowdfunding project) and behavior-based social interaction (e.g., following other investors' behavior) on successful crowdfunding. Additionally, we investigate whether the motivation of goal achievement moderates the relationship between social interaction and performance of crowdfunding projects or not. Findings We find that the number of times a crowdfunding project is shared has a positive influence on its performance, as does the number of project backers. Furthermore, we confirm that goal achievement motivation moderates the effects of information- and behavior-based social interaction on the performance of crowdfunding projects.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.54-62
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• 2014

Crowdfunding, a way of raising small size investments or donations from numerous individuals, mostly through internet to fund a project, has attracted global interests. The growth of the social network platform has made crowdfunding easier especially for those in the arts and culture sector. Despite the growth of such vehicle, there has been not much empirical research on the subject. We investigated the relationships between the information in the web sites and its contribution to the success in fundraising. We have sampled 161 projects that were uploaded on Tumblbug.com and studied the type of information that lead to a successful fund raise. As a result, we fould that the contents characteristics including motion-pictures, images, and lengthy texts have positive impacts on the success of fundraising. Fundraising rewards did not show any impacts.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.45-66
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• 2018

Crowdfunding has become more popular than angel funding for fundraising by venture companies. Identification of success factors may be useful for fundraisers and investors to make decisions related to crowdfunding projects and predict a priori whether they will be successful or not. Recent studies have suggested several numeric factors, such as project goals and the number of associated SNS, studying how these affect the success of crowdfunding campaigns. However, prediction of the success of crowdfunding campaigns via non-numeric and unstructured data is not yet possible, especially through analysis of structural characteristics of documents introducing projects in need of funding. Analysis of these documents is promising because they are open and inexpensive to obtain. We propose a novel method to predict the success of a crowdfunding project based on the introductory text. To test the performance of the proposed method, in our study, texts related to 1,980 actual crowdfunding projects were collected and empirically analyzed. From the text data set, the following details about the projects were collected: category, number of replies, funding goal, fundraising method, reward, number of SNS followers, number of images and videos, and miscellaneous numeric data. These factors were identified as significant input features to be used in classification algorithms. The results suggest that the proposed method outperforms other recently proposed, non-text-based methods in terms of accuracy, F-score, and elapsed time.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.1-12
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• 2014

It is essential factor for business operation to raise funds effectively. However, in Korea, many start-ups and small businesses have difficulties in fund-raising. In recent years, crowdfunding, a new method for funding a project of individuals or organizations by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people, has been growing up simultaneously with diffusion of social media. Crowdfunding is on early stage in Korea, and the majority of projects are focused on cultural or art categories. There is high proportion of projects that have social value in start-up sector. Crowdfunding in Korea has great potential because success rate of it is much higher than its of advanced countries, although market size is much smaller than them. The purpose of this paper is to propose success strategies of crowdfunding for start-up through case study. 5 crowdfunding platforms of Korea and Kickstarter, the platform of United States were investigated. Then we checked the figures related to the operation of the whole Korean projects on start-up. Finally, we made comparison between the cases of success and failure by analyzing 8 project characteristics. The study shows that it were the differences in trustworthiness and activeness of project creator, value of reward and efforts for interactivity that have great effects on success of the project. Whereas there was no significant influence of societal contribution and sponsor engagement. The thesis provides success strategies of crowdfunding for start-up as follows. Firstly, creator of the project should make support base by enthusiastic activites before launching funding project. Secondly, there should be contents that can easily show the process of business development in the project information. Thirdly, there must be appropriate design of rewards for each amounts of support money. Finally, efforts for interactivity, such as frequent updates, response for comments and SNS posting, should be followed after the launch of the project.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.137-151
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• 2015

Crowdfunding is a novel method for funding from many individuals using web based platform often in return for products or equity. It allows individual entrepreneurs to create diverse products and services. This thesis elaborates a theoretical foundation for identifying the factors that must have motivated the funders in sponsoring crowdfunding projects. Based on the motivation theory, the proposed research model is constructed with intrinsic and extrinsic motivations from relevant literatures. We also examined how different crowdfunding modes ('Keeping It All' and 'All or Nothing') moderate the proposed research model. Based on the survey from various crowdfunding service providers in Korea, this empirical study found that continuous participation in crowdfunding is positively correlated with factors such as enjoyment, familiarity, agency credibility and reward, while peer-influence shows negative correlation. Furthermore, moderating effects of funding modes significantly affect continuous participation. These empirical results contribute insights on the emerging phenomenon of crowdfunding from funders' perspectives and shed lights more on the ways that the actions of platform providers may affect their ability to receive entrepreneurial financing.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.265-290
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• 2023

Even though crowdfunding has become popular as a novel means of raising capital for early-stage ventures and startups through an Internet-based platform, it is unclear how a funder's characteristics, such as motivation and ability, influence their information processing and pledging decision. This study aims to propose and test a research model for determining the relationships between a funder's personal attributes, information processing style, and funding intention. To test the research model, we collected data from 139 Amazon Mechanical Turk participants through an online questionnaire survey. The findings indicate that a funder's self-efficacy has a positive effect on heuristic processing but has no significant effect on systematic processing. By contrast, a funder's personal relevance positively influences both systematic and heuristic processing. Furthermore, heuristic processing, as well as perceived value and perceived risk, influence pledging intentions positively. Our findings potentially contribute to improving the design of crowdfunding platforms to better support a funder's information needs. Based on our findings, we discuss the implications of our study as well as the directions for future research.