Crowdfunding Success of Tourism Projects - Evidence from Switzerland.

Abstract

Crowdfunding as a new way of financing has increased over the last years, but until now only little is known how project initiators in the tourism sector can increase their chances of successful fundraising. Using a dataset of 104 tourism projects from one of the dominant crowdfunding platforms in Switzerland, we test factors of project characteristics, project presentation and off-page media communication activities on their effect on fundraising success. Our results show that specific project characteristics such as team size and national proximity leverage fundraising success. In contrast, the effects of the use of additional social media platforms and an additional homepage are mixed.

Keywords: crowdfunding, social media, online-communication, web 2.0.