Crowdfunding as Donations to Entrepreneurial Firms
研究众筹中资金提供者类似公共物品贡献的回报结构，发现项目产出的有形价值对捐款影响很小，而非金钱动机起主要作用，并指出创业者可激发三种特定动机来获得融资。
The bulk of today's (“preorder-,” “reward-,” “gift-,” and “donation-based”) crowdfunding raises funds for small, private entrepreneurial ventures without granting funders private claims to the projects’ income or the ability to guarantee the realization and delivery of project outcomes. We theorize and show empirically – via a mixed-method approach applied to a representative and remarkably informative case – that the payoff structure for crowdfunders, akin to a public good contribution problem, leads to the tangible value of main project outputs exerting little influence on contributions to crowdfunding. This then raises the question of which funder motivations fund seekers may have to address to crowdfund their projects. We demonstrate the especially large role of non-pecuniary motivations and pinpoint three particular motivations that profit-seeking entrepreneurs may stimulate to be financed through crowdfunding. The findings hold important implications for entrepreneurs’ crowdfunding strategies, platform design, and our understanding of how this funding institution works in general. The study also adds to emerging research on the implications of the public good nature of crowdfunding.