Why funders invest in crowdfunding projects

Abstract

While previous studies have identified several factors that influence funders’ investment behavior in crowdfunding, few have explored the underlying mechanisms, particularly the potential boundary conditions in which the effect of funders’ trust varies. This paper examines two contextual variables: project type and funding level, which moderate the relationships between key antecedents and investment decisions. The research model based on the trust theory and dual-process perspective was developed and evaluated with a web-based experiment using actual crowdfunding projects chosen from a real crowdfunding site. Our findings provide new insight into the role of trust and its antecedents in different contexts. Show more