Crowdfunding cultural and commercial entrepreneurs: an empirical study on motivation in distinct backer communities
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Crowdfunding cultural and commercial entrepreneurs: an empirical study on motivation in distinct backer communities Tobias Bürger
&
Simon Kleinert
Accepted: 13 August 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Drawing on self-determination theory (SDT), this study examines differences in the motivation of backers to support cultural and commercial entrepreneurs through reward crowdfunding. We propose that backers of commercial campaigns are a community of early-customers motivated by the prospects of attractive product offerings, while backers of cultural projects constitute a distinct community motivated to support capital-constrained cultural entrepreneurs and connect with like-minded individuals. We use data from the largest German crowdfunding platform, Startnext, and analyze 2334 rewards from 225 cultural and commercial projects. Our results provide support for our hypotheses: Rewards involving price discounts matter particularly for backers of commercial projects and rewards that engage backers with their community matter more for cultural backers. Surprisingly, however, backers of cultural projects are not altruistic; they are no more likely than commercial backers to support campaigns selflessly in response to symbolic rewards.
Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007 /s11187-020-00419-8. T. Bürger (*) Schumpeter School of Business and Economics, University of Wuppertal, Gaußstraße 20, 42109 Wuppertal, Germany e-mail: [email protected] S. Kleinert School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, Tongersestraat 53, 6211 Maastricht, LM, Netherlands
Keywords Entrepreneurship . Arts . Cultural and creative industries . Crowdfunding . Backer community . Self-determination theory . Motivation JEL classifications G23 . G41 . L26
1 Introduction Reward crowdfunding allows entrepreneurs to tap a large number of potential backers and offer rewards such as new products or services, community activities, or thank-you letters in exchange for backers’ financial contributions. Given the growing relevance of reward crowdfunding to fund cultural and commercial entrepreneurial endeavors, it is not surprising that entrepreneurs are increasingly interested in understanding how to appeal to their relevant communities of backers (Belleflamme et al. 2014; Josefy et al. 2017). Crowdfunding research has started to address this by examining the motives of backers to provide funding for campaigns, with mixed results. Some studies find that backers are extrinsically motivated to engage in reward crowdfunding and pledge to pre-order products or to collect rewards (Gerber et al. 2012; Lin et al. 2014; Cholakova and Clarysse 2015). Other studies point to latent intrinsic backer motives such as altruism, the desire to have an impact on the project success or to be part of a community (Gerber et al. 2012; André et al. 2017; Kuppuswamy and Bayus 2017; Nielsen and Binder 2020). While previous research has considerably advanced our knowledge on backer m
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