Search

Crowdfunding platforms are believed to create a more equal-opportunity environment for fundraising by removing entrance barriers found in traditional entrepreneurial markets. Our work investigates whether in creating more equal opportunities for entrepreneurs to enter the market, crowdfunding platforms also create a more equal distribution of funds across ventures. To this end, we utilized a natural experiment in the form of a policy change on Kickstarter.com that resulted in opening the market to more players. Using platform-level analysis, we show that opening the platform shifted demand toward the head of the distribution: More funds and backers became concentrated in a smaller number of head-offers (the superstar effect). Using individual backer-level analysis, we show that these changes in demand distribution are likely to have resulted from changes in investors' investment behavior, beyond changes in the composition of the demand side (that is, changes in the types of investors entering the market). Together, our results suggest that efforts to level the playing field in crowdfunding platforms can ultimately result in a less equitable distribution of funds across market participants, and drive investors to focus their investments on a smaller set of campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This research uses a crowdfunding context to examine when and why a simple difference in frame—using "want" versus "need" in the request—affects funders' compliance with an appeal for contributions. Building on the semantic framing and psycholinguistics literature, we propose that using "want" (vs. "need") signals that the fundraiser is a relatively less (vs. more) dependent person. This perception difference then exerts opposing effects on the two major forms of crowdfunding appeals. For reward-based appeals, in which fundraisers promise a return on contribution, funders have a for-profit (i.e. incentive-seeking) goal and are more willing to contribute to a less dependent fundraiser. In contrast, for donation-based appeals, in which no incentives are promised by the fundraisers, funders are primarily motivated by a nonprofit (i.e. helping) goal and are more willing to contribute to a fundraiser who is seen as more dependent on help. Therefore, we predict that a "want" (vs. "need") frame is more effective in reward-based (vs. donation-based) crowdfunding. Results from two large-scale observational studies and four experiments support our predictions and also illuminate the underlying mechanisms. Collectively, the findings contribute to the literature on semantic framing and crowdfunding and also offer practical implications for fundraisers, marketers, and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On crowdfunding platforms, the success of campaigns relies on the ability of projects to attract backers. While backers' motivations have been examined, the dynamics existing among the distinct profiles of backers remain underexplored. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, this research offers a typology of backers' profiles and shows how these profiles contribute to the success of a crowdfunding campaign. Informed by the sociological theory of cooperation, these results explain how backers with different profiles influence each other's decisions to support crowdfunding campaigns. We provide guidelines to project leaders and platforms to attract backers with the best profiles at the best moment to optimise the campaign's success strategy. We also help crowdfunding platform managers build their crowd of backers and optimise their number of funded projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study adopts a signaling theory perspective to examine whether and how crowdfunding (relative to angel financing) influences subsequent venture capital (VC) investments in startups. We used a bivariate probit model with propensity score matching to address the potential endogeneity of the initial funding choice. Subsequently, we found that crowdfunded startups have a lower chance of receiving VC funding than angel-financed startups and that the effect is more negative for startups located outside of startup cluster cities. We show that corporate VCs, unlike independent VCs comprising the majority of VCs, favor crowdfunded startups. Our study contributes to the literature on crowdfunding, startup finance, and the transformative effects of IT-enabled platforms. This study further discusses the practical implications of crowdfunding in startup finance ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurs increasingly tap into both spatial and digital resource environments to mobilize critical resources in support of new ventures. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how entrepreneurs make joint use of these environments. Linking the recent debate on spatial and digital affordances to the resource mobilization literature, this study examines how entrepreneurs mobilize critical resources from local ecosystems and the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter in complementary ways. We discuss two strategies of resource mobilization. (1) The circular strategy, which is mainly applied by social ventures, leverages community narratives and support for crowdfunding campaigns to strengthen and expand the very community support the campaigns are based on. (2) The cumulative strategy, which is mainly applied by commercial high-tech ventures, mobilizes the symbolic value of local institutional ties to attract crowdfunding backers and uses crowdfunding success to attract new resource-holders in local ecosystems. Our findings contribute to research on entrepreneurial resource mobilization and our understanding of the interplay of spatial and digital affordances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Crowdfunding is an increasingly popular channel for project fundraising for entrepreneurial ventures. Such efforts require fundraisers to develop and manage a crowdfunding campaign over a period of time and several stages. Thus, the authors aim to identify the stages fundraisers go through in their crowdfunding campaign process and how their engagement evolves throughout this process. Design/methodology/approach: Following a multiple case study research design analysing six successful campaigns, the current study suggests a taxonomy of stages the fundraisers go through in their crowdfunding campaign management process while identifying the types of engagement displayed and their relative intensity at each of these stages. Findings: The study proposes a five-stage process framework (pre-launch, launch, mid-campaign, conclusion and post-campaign), accompanied by a series of propositions outlining the relative intensity of different types of engagement throughout this process. The authors show that engagement levels appear with high intensity at pre-launch, and to a lesser degree also at the post-launch stage while showing low intensity at the stages in between them. More specifically, cognitive and behavioural engagement are most prominent at the pre- and post-launch stages. Emotional engagement is highest during the launch, mid-launch and conclusion stages. And social engagement maintains moderate levels of intensity throughout the process. Originality/value: This study focuses on the campaign process using engagement theory, thus identifying the differing engagement patterns throughout the dynamic crowdfunding campaign management process, not just in one part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Crowdfunding is increasingly favoured by entrepreneurs for online financing. Predicting crowdfunding success can provide valuable guidance for stakeholders. It is a new attempt to evaluate the relative performance of different machine learning algorithms for crowdfunding prediction. Objectives: This study aims to identify the key factors of crowdfunding, and find the different performance and usage of machine learning algorithms for crowdfunding prediction. Method: We crawled data from MoDian.com, a Chinese crowdfunding platform, and predicted the crowdfunding performance using four machine learning algorithms, which is a new exploration in this area. Most of the existing literature focuses on empirical analysis. This work solves the problem of predicting crowdfunding performance using a dataset with a minimal number of highly contributive features, which has higher accuracy compared to the regression analysis. Results: The experiment results show that feature‐selection‐based machine learning models are effective and beneficial in crowdfunding prediction. Conclusion: Feature selection can significantly improve the prediction performance of the machine learning models. KNN achieved the best prediction results with five features: number of backers, target amount, number of project likes, number of project comments, and sponsor fans. The prediction accuracy was improved by 16%, the precision was improved by 13.23%, the recall was improved by 22.66%, the F‐score was improved by 18.48%, and the AUC was improved by 14.9%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines and compares the funding distribution inequities in arts organizations across three different funding institutions—government grantmaking, charitable contributions, and crowdfunding—through different inequity measures. Based on three different datasets including the National Endowment for the Arts grants data, National Center for Charitable Statistics data, and Kickstarter crowdfunding data starting in 2009, we find that compared to non-arts funds on the same platforms, arts-related funds in these institutions are not more concentrated in the hands of a few, although the level of concentration is strikingly high. In addition, we find that nonprofit contributions are heavily concentrated, far more than government grants. However, contributions to arts nonprofits are not more concentrated than to other nonprofits. We also explore how the pandemic crisis impacted arts funding distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crowdfunding platforms are seen as potential solutions to facilitate disintermediated giving, where people can go directly to the public for help with their difficulties. Although disintermediation is widespread and active in the crowdfunding industry, the fiercely competitive environment, combined with concerns about personal data use and unethical conduct, has resulted in an enormous number of campaigns failing. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate factors that influence contributors’ intention to participate in the crowdfunding platform. Using a self-administered survey, this research collected data from 339 individuals with initial knowledge of crowdfunding activities. The results of hypothesis testing indicate that gamification has a direct positive impact on affective user experience and trust in the platform but insignificantly affects donation intention on a crowdfunding platform. Interestingly, the mediating role of affective user experience and trust are established. The results lead to the discussion that gamification alone not directly impact donors' intentions to contribute on crowdfunding platforms, it significantly influences intention when mediated by affective user experience and trust in the platform. The substantial contribution of the relationship between gamification and trust in the platform, emphasizing the importance of user experience as a key precursor to positive behavioural intentions in online and gamified environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This systematic literature review examines the existing research on crowdfunding for renewable energy (RE) projects, with the purpose of identifying the factors that influence the need and the success of such crowdfunding campaigns, and the findings discuss the potential role of the public sector, and offer future research directions. The review synthesizes and analyses findings from 33 peer‐reviewed articles published between 2016 and 2023 in leading journals like the Journal of Cleaner Production, Energy Economics, and Journal of Business Research. The results show that crowdfunding can be an effective source of financing for RE projects, particularly in developing countries where traditional financing options are limited. The review identifies financial characteristics, communication and marketing strategies, media coverage, project category, and message framing as key factors that influence the success of crowdfunding campaigns for RE projects. The potential role of the public sector in supporting crowdfunding is also discussed, including creating an enabling environment, providing funding and technical assistance, promoting the benefits of RE and crowdfunding, addressing regulatory and information barriers, and collaborating with other stakeholders. Finally, the review identifies compelling areas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green finance, defined as channeling money into sustainable development activities, is still far lower than needed to achieve net-zero emissions objectives. In this paper, we discuss the role of technologies in developing green finance. We identify that green finance faces three major challenges, including the risk management of green projects, the scarcity of innovative green financing products, and compliance with the regulations. Then, in the context of the existing literature, we explore recent technologies, including blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), data analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), and robotics that are helping to deal with the challenges in green finance. We show that data-driven approaches utilizing AI and ML help in the risk assessment of green projects; FinTech-based crowdfunding platforms provide innovative green financial products and regulatory technologies (RegTech) support in compliance with regulations. We also identify that the environmental footprint of cryptocurrencies is an emerging area in the technologies and green finance domain. Our framework could be helpful to further extend the debate on the role of technology in green finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evaluation of crowdfunding campaigns varies from person to person; some investors are more interested in the project's creativity, and others are more concerned with the profiles of entrepreneurs. The study investigated how entrepreneurs' face disclosure influenced the success of crowdfunding. Secondary data were collected from multiple crowdfunding platforms for projects in Africa. That is, cross-country data from 54 African countries, to overcome data limitations from a single country. An econometrics analysis revealed that the facial disclosure of entrepreneurs increases the probability of crowdfunding success by 3%. Images, videos, and backers had a positive influence on the success of crowdfunding. On the contrary, the duration of the crowdfunding campaign was negatively associated with its success. To reduce the knowledge asymmetry between creators and backers, those prepared to start a crowdfunding project must provide as much information as possible to show their abilities. This study contributes to understanding the role of disclosing an entrepreneur's profile on economic exchanges to the success of online crowdfunding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between Right-to-Work (RTW) laws and creativity. Using data from the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform for the period 2010–2019, we find that the number of projects launched, the probability of success, the average amount of capital pledged, and the average number of backers are all significantly higher in states without RTW laws than in states with RTW laws. This finding holds for both Art- and Product- focused projects. Thus, our findings are consistent with the view that states without RTW laws provide a better outlet for creativity than states with RTW laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurs and small businesses have increasingly used reward-based crowdfunding to raise capital for their creative projects, whose success is central to this industry. Thus, predicting the success of crowdfunding campaigns is a topic of great importance for entrepreneurs and platform managers. The literature that employs monolithic classifiers and static ensemble learning for crowdfunding success prediction are scarce. In contrast, the dynamic selection (DS) algorithm, which belongs to the ensemble learning category, deserves a particular remark since it has overcome traditional monolithic classifiers and static ensembles in many applications. This paper proposes a dynamic selection framework for reward crowdfunding prediction. DS algorithms select a competent subset of the classifier per query instance. This procedure is performed during the generalization, and the subset is composed of local experts, favoring an increase in accuracy. Fifteen machine learning models are evaluated using three metrics (accuracy, area under the ROC curve and F-score), and ensemble learning obtained better results than traditional classifiers. In particular, Meta-DES, which performs dynamic selection, obtains the best overall results among the evaluated models. Furthermore, since usually interpreting the output of ML models is considered to be very difficult due to their complex "black box" architecture, we also use Shapley additive explanations to interpret the perdition's outputs. Among variables evaluated in our models, the textual sentiment of the mass media, the number of pledges, and the target amount of the campaign deserve a highlight when predicting the campaign's success. The source-code and further details about the experimental analysis are available at https://github.com/las33/Crowdfunding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The objective of the article is to investigate the applicability of crowdfunding in the museum context, addressing the limited research available in this area. By focusing on museums in Poland, known for their cultural diversity, the objective was to examine how crowdfunding can provide financial support, enhance museum visibility, and foster community engagement. Research Design & Methods: Using an exploratory qualitative approach, we analysed digital data from 28 Polish museum crowdfunding projects collected between May and July 2023. We examined structural choices, social communication strategies, and goal achievement using online promotional channels. This analysis followed predefined research questions and a theory-driven coding method with consensus coding by two researchers. Findings: Our research highlights crowdfunding's potential in addressing museums' financial challenges, and offering tailored support, especially for smaller institutions. It also identifies cases of campaigns falling short of funding goals due to inadequate promotion and donor communication. Reward-based crowdfunding consistently outperforms donation-based models, strengthening audience connections and cultural heritage dissemination in the museum context. Implications & Recommendations: This study underscores crowdfunding as a financial solution for museums, emphasizing the need for digital literacy and employee training. Variations in communication strategies among museums highlight the importance of strategic planning. Crowdfunding can enhance financial stability, audience connections, and societal impact when aligned with other financial measures, making it a viable strategy for museums. Contribution & Value Added: This research contributes to the existing body of knowledge on innovative fundraising, engagement, and museum management. It bridges the gap in research regarding crowdfunding in museums. The study's value lies in its comprehensive understanding of how crowdfunding can be applied across various facets of museum operations, providing museums with valuable insights for financial support, audience engagement, and enhancing their societal impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Accounting & Auditing Perspective Magazine / Muhasebe ve Denetime Bakış is the property of Union of Chambers of Certified Public Accountants of Turkey (TURMOB) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Crowdfunding has become a popular financing method, attracting investors, businesses, and entrepreneurs. However, many campaigns fail to secure funding, making it crucial to reduce participation risks using artificial intelligence (AI). This study investigates the effectiveness of advanced AI techniques in predicting the success of crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter by analyzing campaign blurbs. We compare the performance of two widely used text representation models, bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) and FastText, in conjunction with long-short term memory (LSTM) and gradient boosting machine (GBM) classifiers. Our analysis involves preprocessing campaign blurbs, extracting features using BERT and FastText, and evaluating the predictive performance of these features with LSTM and GBM models. All experimental results show that BERT representations significantly outperform FastText, with the highest accuracy of 0.745 achieved using a fine-tuned BERT model combined with LSTM. These findings highlight the importance of using deep contextual embeddings and the benefits of fine-tuning pre-trained models for domain-specific applications. The results are benchmarked against existing methods, demonstrating the superiority of our approach. This study provides valuable insights for improving predictive models in the crowdfunding domain, offering practical implications for campaign creators and investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Nankai Business Review is the property of Nankai Business Review Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Objective: The primary objective of this research is to identify and analyze the factors affecting the success of startups, with a specific focus on the distinct personality traits of investors and their impact on investment decisions in initial coin offering. This study aims to investigate how the personality traits of neuroticism and openness to experience influence investment decisions and to explore the role of cognitive legitimacy in moderating these relationships. By integrating theories of personality and legitimacy, this research seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the psychological factors that drive investment behaviors in the context of initial coin offerings (ICOs). Method: This study employs a phenomenological research design, leveraging qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the subjective experiences of investors in initial coin offering. The research follows a structured approach encompassing the following steps: A two-stage sampling process was adopted. In the first stage, tokens from ICOs conducted between 2020 and 2022 were selected using simple random sampling. Reliable sources such as Coinmarketcap.com, Crunchbase.com, and ICOcrunch.com provided the list of tokens. A random selection program written in Python was utilized to choose 40 sample tokens from this list, ensuring an unbiased representation. Data on investment decisions were collected through a standard questionnaire distributed to a large and diverse sample of investors. The questionnaire was shared via prominent Telegram channels which collectively cover a broad international investor base. Neuroticism and Openness to Experience traits were measured using a standardized Big Five personality factors questionnaire. Cognitive Legitimacy was assessed through the analysis of social media interactions, particularly on Twitter (X). A developer-created account was used to gather data on tweets containing specific keywords related to the ICOs. The data included tweet content, likes, retweets, user IDs, follower counts, and weet sentiments categorized as positive, neutral, or negative. Sentiment analysis was performed using the RoBERTa pre-trained language model, known for its high accuracy in text classification tasks. WarpPLS software was employed to conduct structural equation modeling (SEM), allowing for the examination of complex relationships between variables. The analysis focused on the direct effects of neuroticism and openness to experience on investment decisions, and the moderating effect of cognitive legitimacy. Reliability was tested using Average Variance Extracted (AVE), with thresholds set to ensure convergent validity. Results: The study yielded several key findings that highlight the interplay between personality traits, cognitive legitimacy, and investment decisions: 1. Impact of Neuroticism: - High levels of neuroticism were found to have a significant negative impact on investment decisions in successful ICOs. Investors characterized by high neuroticism exhibited tendencies towards risk aversion, pessimism, and lower trust in new ventures, making them less likely to participate in these offerings. 2. Impact of Openness to Experience: - Conversely, investors with high openness to experience were more inclined to invest in innovative and novel projects. This personality trait positively correlated with investment decisions, as these individuals are typically more open to risk-taking and exploring new opportunities. 3. Role of Cognitive Legitimacy: - Cognitive legitimacy significantly enhanced investment decisions. Startups that demonstrated high cognitive legitimacy through transparent and credible actions on social media were more successful in attracting investors. However, cognitive legitimacy did not act as a moderating variable between personality traits and investment decisions but had a strong direct effect on increasing investment decisions. Hypotheses Testing: -H1: High neuroticism leads to a decrease in investment in successful initial offerings. (Confirmed) -H2: Higher cognitive legitimacy of a business leads to more investment in successful products. (Confirmed) -H3: Cognitive legitimacy moderates the relationship between neuroticism and investment in successful products. (Rejected) -H4: Openness to experience leads to increased investment in successful initial offerings. (Confirmed) -H5: Cognitive legitimacy moderates the relationship between openness to experience and investment in successful ventures. (Rejected) Conclusion: The research concludes that personality traits, particularly neuroticism and openness to experience, play a crucial role in shaping investment decisions in the context of crowdfunding. Neuroticism negatively influences investment decisions, making individuals with this trait less likely to invest in new ventures. In contrast, openness to experience has a positive impact, with such individuals being more inclined towards innovative investments. Cognitive legitimacy emerged as a vital factor for attracting investments. Startups that can build strong cognitive legitimacy by maintaining transparency and credibility on social media are more likely to succeed in their fundraising efforts. Although cognitive legitimacy does not moderate the relationship between personality traits and investment decisions, its direct positive impact on investment decisions underscores its importance. Implications for Practice: -For Startups: Developing and maintaining cognitive legitimacy through transparent and credible communication on social media is essential for attracting a diverse investor base. Understanding the personality traits of potential investors can help tailor communication strategies to better engage with them. -For Researchers: The study opens new avenues for exploring the impact of other personality traits and forms of legitimacy on investment decisions. Future research could expand the scope to include traits such as extraversion and conscientiousness, and investigate the effects of moral and pragmatic legitimacy. The study focuses on two specific personality traits, suggesting a need for future research to consider a broader range of traits. Additionally, exploring other forms of legitimacy, such as moral or pragmatic legitimacy, could provide a more comprehensive understanding of their impact on investment decisions. Longitudinal studies are recommended to examine how these relationships evolve over time, especially in the dynamic and rapidly changing ICO market. In summary, this research highlights the significant role of personality traits and cognitive legitimacy in influencing investment decisions in the context of crowdfunding. The findings provide valuable insights for startups and campaign developers seeking to enhance their legitimacy and attract diverse investor profiles. The study contributes to the growing field of financial psychology and offers practical recommendations for improving fundraising strategies in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Islamic Economics & Finance Studies is the property of Politik Ekonomik ve Sosyal Serdivan and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We employ a sharp regression discontinuity design to identify the causal effects of investor-base disclosure (IB DISCLOSE) on funding outcomes and entrepreneurship success. Since February 2016, Kickstarter has disclosed IB information, namely, backer statistics including geographic locations and previous funding experience of the backers, once the number of backers for a project reaches ten. Exploiting this discontinuity, we show the disclosure increases the likelihood of funding success by 10 percent and the amount of funds pledged by 13 percent. The effect is more pronounced when the project quality is high and for projects with less credible creators, high ex ante uncertainty, high information asymmetry between creators and backers, and high financial costs to backers. We also find IB DISCLOSE increases the likelihood of product delivery. Our study highlights the importance of platform-provided disclosure in improving the efficiency of capital allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crowdfunding is an innovative means of financing entrepreneurial initiatives. This study explores the effect of signaling on the crowdfunding performance of social economy organizations (SEOs) in South Korea. Analyzing 677 reward‐based crowdfunding projects by SEOs, we found that signaling social purpose, economic purpose, and organizational information were likely to be related to performance. In addition, signals reflecting an isomorphism akin to that of SEOs' identity were also positively correlated with crowdfunding performance. These findings contribute to the literature by offering insights about the effect of signals of SEOs on crowdfunding and demonstrating that fundraiser characteristics may influence crowdfunding performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nascent entrepreneurs often believe that their chances of success are better than those of others due to imperfect information about the competencies and accomplishments of other entrepreneurs, leading to overplacement. Theory suggests that the provision of historical outcome data of comparable projects could help entrepreneurs develop more realistic plans and expectations by closing the information gap and enabling the calibration of their beliefs. However, effectively calibrating beliefs by incorporating new reference information requires effortful cognitive processing and rational integration of the data, which may be impeded by the same cognitive biases leading to overplacement initially. Drawing from a unique dataset that allows us to observe substantial parts of the planning process of 971 entrepreneurs, we investigate the effectiveness of providing reference values as a debiasing tool. Rather than rationally leveraging the information for honest self-assessment, our findings suggest that entrepreneurs use the information to differentiate themselves even more from the reference group after they see the historical values. This, in turn, results in an even higher level of overplacement. JEL Classifications: G41, D91, L26, L25. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike traditional investing, where decisions follow a clear financial calculus, it is unclear how and why funders support hybrid ventures. To address this question, we analyze the varied priority that investors place on social impact versus financial returns and draw on categories theory to argue that different priority orderings associate with different perceptions of how hybridity aligns with different investment goals. Results show that funders who prioritize financial goals react positively when they perceive a venture exhibits greater hybridity, whereas funders who prioritize social impact do not. Our findings contribute to research on impact investing, hybrid organizations, and categories theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Mevzu is the property of Ali Sever and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Aim. The article aims to formulate the problem of formation of such type of investment institutions as investment platform in BRICS.Tasks. The objectives of the article are defined by the fact that the executive director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund proposed to create a joint investment platform of BRICS countries, allowing BRICS members to invest more actively in the economies of their partners. And as is known, BRICS countries currently play a significant and constantly growing role in world politics and international relations. Methods. In the process of research the set tasks were solved by the author usin g general scientific (historical, dialectical, systemic, logical, method of analysis) and legal (comparative legal, sociological, axiological) research methods.Results. The result of the research is the proposal based on the Russian experience of regulation of platform services (financial platforms, investment platforms and information systems) on the formation on the basis of the Russian regulation model of the concept of building the corresponding institution within BRICS. At the same time, the article also draws attention to possible problems that may arise during the preparation of the relevant international act. In particular, the implementation of this initiative raises a wide range of technical, economic and legal issues that require detailed consideration.Conclusions. When choosing specific investment methods that can be used on such a platform, it is necessary to take into account the needs of businesses and the population, both in the long-term and short-term attraction and placement of resources. In particular, legal regulation of the choice of the legal regime for investment should influence the choice of the legal status of entities that will be admitted to such a platform, highlighting, for example, qualified investors or retail investors.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the legal regulation of the process of introducing FinTech in the sphere of impact finance within the context of digital technologies in the newly expanded BRICS bloc. This is a crucial step in order to be able to meet the challenges of the new global digital economy and cooperate in achieving common goals. The authors come to the conclusion that although the BRICS countries are geographically located on different continents, the states that decided to form this organization share a number of key features. Firstly, the governmental role in the digital transformation of all BRICS countries is significantly greater in comparison to the Western countries. Secondly, because not all BRICS countries have developed economies, the BRICS member states, despite their strong interest in digitalization of their countries, do not always have the capacity to finance such projects from their own national budgets, which highlights the important role of the BRICS New Development Bank in the process of digitalization of the BRICS economies. Thirdly, cooperation among the BRICS countries, through their participation in the New Development Bank in the digital realm, can significantly contribute to fostering the economic growth of each country within the integration. Since the greatest effect of digital technology penetration is achieved when starting from the lowest level, harmonization of approaches in the BRICS countries and new member countries of the bloc will most likely have a synergistic effect.

The main objective of this study is to examine the impact of equity financing on the financial performance of Jordanian industrial companies. The study population comprised 393 board directors from 55 Jordanian industrial companies. Purposive sampling was employed to select 346 board directors for the study sample. Data were collected via an online questionnaire, and the study used a descriptive-analytical approach to examine the study hypotheses. The study concludes that equity financing posi-tively impacts financial performance. Also, each of the angel investors, retained earnings, crowdfunding, and ploughed-back profit positively impact financial performance. The study recommends that Jordanian industrial companies focus on retained earnings as a funding source; what helps is the lower costs of obtaining financing from retained earnings compared with other funding sources. This study is unique because, as far as the researcher knows, it is the first to look at how angel investors, retained earnings, crowdfunding, and ploughed-back profit affect the financial performance of Jordanian industrial compa-nies all at the same time or separately.

The authors posit that in an initial exposure to a broadcast video, hearing different voices narrate (in succession) a persuasive message encourages consumers' attention and processing of the message, thereby facilitating persuasion; this is referred to as the voice numerosity effect. Across four studies (plus validation and replication studies)—including two large-scale, real-world data sets (with more than 11,000 crowdfunding videos and over 3.6 million customer transactions, and more than 1,600 video ads) and two controlled experiments (with over 1,800 participants)—the results provide support for the hypothesized effect. The effect (1) has consequential, economic implications in a real-world marketplace, (2) is more pronounced when the message is easier to comprehend, (3) is more pronounced when consumers have the capacity to process the ad message, and (4) is mediated by the favorability of consumers' cognitive responses. The authors demonstrate the use of machine learning, text mining, and natural language processing to process and analyze unstructured (multimedia) data. Theoretical and marketing implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charity fundraising is becoming increasingly reliant on online platforms such as crowdfunding platforms. However, overwhelmingly, crowdfunding campaigns are not meeting their goals. Therefore, it is imperative to examine how the success of charity fundraising campaigns can be improved. In this paper, we focus on the design of project images on a crowdfunding website, which portray the themes and content of the projects. Employing the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model, we investigate the relationships between image attributes (S) and image emotions (O), and between image emotions (O) and campaign outcomes (R). We developed and trained a deep neural network model to identify the emotions conveyed in the images, and then implemented it to analyze project images from a popular crowdfunding platform. We applied the obtained image emotions together with the objective image attributes and the project outcome metrics to explore from a design perspective, what image attributes evoke image emotions, and how image emotions are related to the success of charity fundraising projects. Our results confirm these relationships and further suggest that the roles of image emotions on the success of crowdfunding campaigns vary with project characteristics such as the project budget and category. In addition, the image emotions of competing projects on the crowdfunding platform were found to reduce the project's performance. In an extended study, we conducted an online randomized controlled experiment by manipulating image attributes to reexamine the causal relationships and verify the mediating roles of positive and negative empathies between image emotions and campaign outcomes. This research contributes to the charity fundraising literature from a novel perspective of emotions in project images. It presents new and unique findings regarding the mediation roles of positive and negative empathies and the limitations of the emotion of sadness in certain types of charity fundraising. In addition, our findings provide useful insights for practitioners seeking to design successful online charity campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In this study, the authors sought to investigate how the implicit social ties of both project owners and potential backers are associated with crowdfunding project success. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on social ties theory and factors that affect crowdfunding success, in this research, the authors developed a model to study how project owners' and potential backers' implicit social ties are associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The proposed model was empirically tested with crowdfunding data collected from Kickstarter and social media data collected from Twitter. The authors performed the test using an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model with fixed effects. Findings: The authors found that project owners' implicit social ties (specifically, their social media activities, degree centrality and betweenness centrality) are significantly and positively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. Meanwhile, potential project backers' implicit social ties (their social media activities and degree centrality) are negatively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The authors also found that project size moderates the effects of project owners' social media activities on projects' degrees of success. Originality/value: This work contributes to the literature on crowdfunding by investigating how the implicit social ties of both potential backers and project owners on social media are associated with crowdfunding project success. This study extends the previous research on social ties' roles in explaining crowdfunding project success by including implicit social ties, while the literature explored only explicit social ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of crowdfunding markets that include both expert and nonexpert investors will soon accelerate due to recent changes in Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations. Prior work has suggested that nonexperts (1) may benefit from experts’ participation via mimicking their trades, but (2) will also face a cost, as experts crowding nonexperts out of the best opportunities will ensure that nonexperts will suffer lower returns than experts. Traditional economic theory holds that the crowding effect means that the relative importance of nonexperts in the market will decline over time until they become unimportant. Exploiting a unique period in one crowdfunding market (Prosper.com) that allowed us to directly estimate the net cost of competing with better-informed experts, we found that the net negative effects of expert participation on nonexperts are small. We used simulations to both better understand (1) the market characteristics and crowdfunding platform choices that influence experts’ and nonexperts’ returns, their return gap, and the extent to which nonexperts are better or worse off relative to a market without expert participation, and (2) the factors that may contribute to the small expert/nonexpert Prosper return gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biases on online platforms pose a threat to social inclusion. We examine the influence of a novel source of bias in online philanthropic lending, namely that associated with religious differences. We first propose religion distance as a probabilistic measure of differences between pairs of individuals residing in different countries. We then incorporate this measure into a gravity model of trade to explain variation in countryto-country lending volumes. We further propose a set of contextual moderators that characterize individuals’ offline (local) and online social contexts, which we argue combine to determine the influence of religion distance on lending activity. We empirically estimate our gravity model using data from Kiva.org, reflecting all lending actions that took place between 2006 and 2017. We demonstrate the negative and significant effect of religion distance on lending activity, over and above other established factors in the literature. Further, we demonstrate the moderating role of lenders’ offline social context (diversity, social hostilities, and governmental favoritism of religion) on the aforementioned relationship to online lending behavior. Finally, we offer empirical evidence of the parallel role of online contextual factors, namely those related to community features offered by the Kiva platform (lending teams), which appear to amplify the role of religious bias. In particular, we show that religious team membership is a double-edged sword that has both favorable and unfavorable consequences, increasing lending in general but skewing said lending toward religiously similar borrowers. Our findings speak to the important frictions associated with religious differences in individual philanthropy; they point to the role of governmental policy vis-à-vis religious tolerance as a determinant of citizens’ global philanthropic behavior, and they highlight design implications for online platforms with an eye toward managing religious bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Crowdfunding has emerged as a transformative alternative to traditional innovation financing. Limitations of conventional funding sources have led to increased interest in alternative financing mechanisms. Crowdfunding, leveraging online platforms, has democratized access to capital, enabling entrepreneurs to develop products and services that align with broader population needs. This paper surveys the literature, demonstrating how crowdfunding platforms have opened doors to capital for entrepreneurs who might otherwise have found it challenging to secure funding through established channels. While crowdfunding's impact on innovation is multifaceted and contingent on factors like innovation type, entrepreneur quality, and regulatory frameworks, its growth trajectory remains robust, solidifying its significance as a source of entrepreneurial finance. The study aims to (1) analyze the effectiveness of crowdfunding in bridging the funding gap for startups, (2) compare crowdfunding with other forms of entrepreneurial finance, (3) assess crowdfunding’s role in fostering innovation, (4) differentiate between crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, and (5) identify the types of innovation facilitated by crowdfunding. Effective crowdfunding implementation hinges on these factors, necessitating concerted efforts from entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers to surmount associated challenges and harness its potential for innovation and economic growth. The findings highlight the necessity for a supportive regulatory framework and the importance of transparency and trust in crowdfunding practices. This study underscores the role of policymakers in creating an environment that fosters innovation through alternative financing. However, this study is limited by the availability of comprehensive data across different crowdfunding platforms and regions. Further empirical research is needed to generalize the findings across various contexts, deepen our understanding of crowdfunding's impact on innovation, and develop strategies to leverage the potential of crowdfunding for innovation. Graphical abstract

Abstract This study constructed a novel decision-making framework for startup companies to evaluate token financing options. A Network structure weighting (NSW) technique was developed and integrated with the analytic network process (ANP) to create a comprehensive assessment model. This innovative approach addressed the limitations of traditional multi-criteria decision-making methods by effectively capturing the complex interdependencies between factors influencing token financing decisions. The proposed model comprises three main steps: (1) utilizing a modified Delphi method to identify key factors affecting token financing, (2) developing the NSW technique to determine the network structure of these factors, and (3) integrating the NSW results into the ANP model to evaluate and rank the critical factors and alternatives. This study applied this framework to assess three token financing alternatives: Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), Initial Exchange Offerings (IEO), and Security Token Offerings (STO). The results indicate that STO is the optimal financing alternative for the analyzed startup scenario in token financing, followed by Initial Exchange Offerings and Initial Coin Offerings. The model identified platform fees, issuance costs, and financing success rate as the three most critical factors influencing the decision. This study contributes to both methodology and practice in FinTech decision-making. The NSW-ANP framework offers a more robust approach to modeling complex financial decisions, while the application to token financing provides valuable insights for startup companies navigating this emerging funding landscape. The proposed framework lays the groundwork for more informed and structured decision-making in the rapidly evolving field of cryptocurrency-based financing.

Education in Indonesia still has significant problems such as the lack of adequate learning facilities, the low quality of education, the high cost of education and the large number of students who drop out of school. The main problem of Indonesian education is the high cost of education, making it difficult for students with middle to lower economy to continue their education. Waqf as an Islamic philanthropy can be a solution to education financing, supported by the MUI Fatwa with the provision of waqf developed with sharia securities through crowdfunding platforms. The regulation of cash waqf through the MUI (Indonesian Ulema Council) Fatwa was developed following the times in Fatwa No. 140/DSN-MUI/VIII/2021 which explains waqf as one of the sharia securities as financing waqf. However, the collection of waqf funds for education financing is still not optimal. So, this research aims to provide an alternative to waqf as an Islamic social financing system that can develop the quality of education in Indonesia with the aim of SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) in creating quality education. This research method uses library research method with literature study analysis through MUI fatwa approach. The results of this study explain the contract scheme that can make it easier for waqif to waqf through crowdfunding in the form of education financing investment, namely the wakalah bil istismar contract and the syirkah contract. However, crowdfunding for education financing is not widely applied for.