• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
• /
• v.7 no.4
• /
• pp.397-404
• /
• 2021

The web-based crowdfunding platform provides small-cap companies the opportunity to reduce financial risks and to reliably produce new products through pre-orders. Meanwhile, crowdfunding projects are also helping companies as a channel to test new products before mass production. Despite these advantages, from the point of view of businesses and consumers, it is true that web-based crowdfunding platforms have limitations in the retail environment. For example, the limited social elements of a web-based platform are somewhat in conflict with the basic characteristics of crowdfunding projects - which inevitably demand high social influences for the success. As such, understanding the mechanisms of social factors of crowdfunding platforms from the consumers' perspective is important. Therefore, in this study, we empirically tested the effect of social factors of crowdfunding platform on consumer participation and evaluation. Based on the Social Influence Theory and Social Presence Theory, we developed a conceptual framework where the social group size and social presence of other backers were the independent variables and the purchaser's intention to participate as the dependent variable. In the results, the size of the social group size and the perceived social presence have a significant positive effect on purchaser's participation intent. In addition, the social presence had a greater influence on the purchaser's intention to participate than the size of the sponsor's social group. We believe that our findings contribute to the extant literature by empirically demonstrating the valid effect of social factors of crowdfunding platforms on consumer evaluations.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
• /
• v.7 no.3
• /
• pp.365-374
• /
• 2021

Recently, the high growth rate and advantages of the crowdfunding market have also led to increased participation of brands and companies, and this also applies to fashion business. Risk has been noted to be a key factor in consumer behavior in crowdfunding. With the high-risk context of crowdfunding where supporters inevitably bear to pay full amount of price before receiving the actual products. Factors enhancing or inhibiting perceived risk of crowdfunding need to be explored. The past literature on perceived risk and consumer attitudes in crowdfunding has expanded, but it has rarely covered the context of experience goods such as fashion products. In addition, the platform characteristics in relation to perceived risk should be addressed. The current study attempts to address the effect of the perceived amount of information offered in a fashion crowdfunding project on perceived risk and the intention to participate in the project. For the experiment of this study, a fictitious crowdfunding page for fashion products was set as the stimuli. A total of 240 Korean participants were recruited and their responses were statistically analyzed using SPSS 24.0 software. In the results, the greater the amount of detailed information about the fashion crowdfunding project, the higher the intention to participate the project. The greater the amount of information provided, the lower the perceived risk of consumers. Moreover, the lowered perceived risk affected the intention of participate. Perceived risk has a partial mediation in the relationship between the amount of information and intention to participate. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.16 no.3
• /
• pp.237-247
• /
• 2018

In this paper, a research model was designed to investigate the factors influencing the intention to the crowdfunding participator of China. The research model includes the platform factors, investor factors, and social factors, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and funding participants' intention. In this research, the data was collected by online survey, and in final analysis, 439 participators' questionnaires were used. The empirical paper proves research hypothesis by using SPSS 23.0. The results of the study are as follows: the crowdfunding platform factors, social factors and the participants' individual factors partially give positive effects to perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness; perceived ease of use gives positive effects to perceived usefulness. In addition, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness have positive effects to participational intention. This paper provides a useful scheme for the better operation and promotion of crowdfunding. In the future, a comparative study of different types of crowdfunding is needed.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.15 no.5
• /
• pp.560-569
• /
• 2015

Crowd funding is the method of raising money for a project, companies from a large group of people via the Internet, in return for future products or equity. Kickstarter is the largest and most successful crowdfunding site where creative projects raise reward based funding. Drawing on dataset of 80,267 projects with combined funding over $1.3b from 8.1m people, this paper suggest that backer select project based on their preference on the project, instead profitability of the project. It suggests that well-established platform and big size of network increases the chance of success of the project due to a ripple effect and blockbuster effects. Clear communication about the project's idea and goal is highly correlated with success. Regular communication on the project site, such as by constant progress updates, helps the success of the project. Equity-based crowdfunding is emerging as an innovative means of raising capital for businesses, so it has been receiving a lot of attention and expectation from the government and the market. The findings of this paper and others will help to get some understanding and insight into equity-based crowdfunding. However, Kickstarter differs from equity-based crowdfunding in the goals of the backers. Kickstarter's backers are not investors, they are contributors. To understand equity-based crowdfunding, the subject will need further study.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.1-18
• /
• 2020

This study is to identify the influence of major variables that affect the participation intention of securities type crowdfunding investors and how participation intention and perceived behavioral control affect investors' herd behavior including indirect effect analysis based on the theory of planned behavior. The ultimate purpose of this study is to understand the investment behavior of securities type crowdfunding investors and to help the relevant parties to develop various policies and business plans to revitalize the system and protect investors. An online survey was conducted on people who are interested or have experience in securities type crowdfunding to receive a total of 276 responses. Excluding outliers, a total of 261 responses were taken into account for the final analysis. For the data analysis, structural equation model analysis using SPSS 22.0 and Amos 22.0 statistical package was conducted. As a result, two of the major variables of the theory of planned behavior-attitude and subjective norm-have been found to have a positive effect on the participation intention of securities type crowdfunding investors. And after analyzing the indirect effect, the participation intention was found to play a mediating role between attitude, subjective norm and herd behavior. However, the perceived behavioral control presented as a major variable of behavioral intention in the theory of planned behavior showed that the effect on participation intention was statistically insignificant. Instead, it was found to have a direct positive effect on herd behavior. This is significant because it empirically confirmed that even if investors perceive securities type crowdfunding as easy to participate, perceived behavioral control does not seem to have a significant impact on participation intention because securities type crowdfunding is an investment in an early-stage business with a high risk of loss. On the other hand, the study has great significance in that it empirically confirmed that domestic securities type crowdfunding investors perceive the funding progress information provided by the platform as a signal and imitate many other investors, showing herd behavior when they actually make an investment. It is expected that this study will provide meaningful insights for the policy making of crowdfunding supervisory offices and platform operators by empirically identifying major variables that influence the participation intentions and herd behavior of domestic securities type crowdfunding investors.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
• /
• v.25 no.1
• /
• pp.65-82
• /
• 2020

Start-ups often use crowdfunding platforms such as Wadiz to get financing from corporate investors and general public. These platforms include functions to increase participant activity through the number of comments, interest and online word-of-mouth. This study aims to elucidate how these functions related to a participant activity exhibit mediating effects on a success of crowdfunding and an achievement rate of targeted investment amount. To this end, the individual variables such as progress period, target amount, venture company, experience of attracting investment, possession of intellectual property rights, a career of the representative and an award experience of the representative were classified into the project characteristics, the company characteristics and the representative characteristics through not only previous studies but also interviews with investment professionals and platform operators. Afterwards, this study went through an empirical verification process using a structural equation model that has both crowdfunding performance and participant activity, which is the independent and mediating factors of three perspectives, as well as the dependent variables. In other words, this study analyzes how the characteristics of three perspectives affect the participant activity and how the participant activity had the mediating effects on the crowdfunding performance. In addition, it derives how the analysis results mentioned above vary according to business types (internet services, culture/art, manufacturing/distribution) and investment styles (stock type and bond type). It is expected that this study will help not only in deriving the factors affecting the performance of an investment type crowdfunding but also in preparing the measures to increase a participant activity.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
• /
• 2020.11a
• /
• pp.713-716
• /
• 2020

코로나 19 로 인해 비대면 소비가 증가하면서 소상공인의 매출 하락이 큰 문제가 되고 있다. 이에 본 논문에서는 소상공인들이 온라인에서 물품을 등록하고 판매할 수 있는 전용 공간이며 크라우드 도네이션 기능을 제공하는 플랫폼을 제안했다. 크라우드 도네이션이란 재난 발생시 특정 지역에 필요한 물품을 소상공인에게서 얻고 소비자가 크라우드 펀딩 형식으로 가격을 지불한 후 플랫폼에서 자체적으로 재난 지역에 구호 물품을 배송해주는 것이다. 이 플랫폼을 통해 소상공인의 온라인 판매와 매출 상승을 돕고 투명한 기부 문화를 확산시킬 수 있기를 기대한다.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
• /
• v.24 no.3
• /
• pp.35-51
• /
• 2019

The two main goals of this study are to derive independent factors affecting the success rate of crowdfunding and to empirically analyze the variation of independent factors' effects on the success of crowdfunding by industry (Internet, culture/art, manufacturing/distribution), and funding type (stock type, bond type). To identify the success factors of crowdfunding for invigoration and strategic utilization, first, several variables were refined after interviews with experts and platform operators with investment experiences in numerous crowdfunding projects. Then, independent factors affecting project involvement were categorized as follows: a characteristic of project, participant activity, and enterprise. Also, the results derived from the influence of independent variables on crowdfunding after moderating effects were driven. Selected independent factors in this study are as follows: crowdfunding period, target amount, visual contents, minimum account money, number of comments, number of SNS followers, level of interest, financial Statement disclosure, investment attraction, venture company, intellectual property rights disclosure, and business operation period. Selected moderating factors in this study are as follows: industry (Internet, culture/art, manufacturing/distribution), and funding type (stock type, bond type). In conclusion, a discussion of the academical and practical implications and a suggestion of directions for further research are explained.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
• /
• v.28 no.7
• /
• pp.155-164
• /
• 2023

In this paper, we examine the influence of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)-related content on the success of online crowdfunding proposals. Along with the increasing significance of ESG standards in business, investment proposals incorporating ESG concepts are now commonplace. Due to the ESG trend, conventional wisdom holds that the majority of proposals with ESG concepts will have a higher rate of success. We investigate by analyzing over 9000 online business presentations found in a Kickstarter dataset to determine which characteristics of these proposals led to increased investment. We first utilized lexicon-based measurement and Feature Engineering to determine the relationship between environment and society scores and financial indicators. Next, Logistic Regression is utilized to determine the effect of including environmental and social terms in a project's description on its ability to obtain funding. Contrary to popular belief, our research found that microentrepreneurs were less likely to succeed with proposals that focused on ESG issues. Our research will generate new opportunities for research in the disciplines of information science and crowdfunding by shedding new light on the environment of online micro-entrepreneurship.

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