What Drives Motivation to Participate Financially in a Crowdfunding Community?

Abstract

This thesis aims to analyse consumers’ motivation to contribute financially to a project that wants to create something new. The principle of consumers pooling their money together in order to support a specific project initiated by someone else, is refered to as crowdfunding. From a practical point of view it is essential for everybody, who wants to use crowdfunding to finance the realization of a project to understand the motive forces of potential supporters. This research contributes to theory as it merges three different research fields creating a unique perspective to deal with this question: it combines relevant aspects from consumer behaviour, behavioural finance and social psychology. Moreover, theory of consumption value is used as a framework to capture five value dimensions relevant for driving motives to participate in crowdfunding activities. An extensive literature and a desk research led to the development of 15 hypotheses. Ten direct effects on the intention to invest, as well as four mediating and one moderating effect were identified. A fictional exemplary crowdfunding project and an associated questionnaire were developed to test the conceptual model. The results of 196 respondents illustrated various values that drive the intention to invest in a crowdfunding project. Significant values were found within the value dimensions financial value, quality performance value, social value and emotional value. Furthermore a positive moderating effect of lead user characteristics on the intention driving value personal utility was found.

Keywords: Crowdfunding, Motivation, Innovation