The antecedents and consequences of crowdfunding investors’ citizenship behaviors. An empirical study of motivations and stickiness
| Pages | 584-599 |
| Date | 12 August 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-09-2017-0271 |
| Published date | 12 August 2019 |
| Author | Wenjie Zhang,Yun Xu,Haichao Zheng |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management |
The antecedents and
consequences of crowdfunding
investors’citizenship behaviors
An empirical study of motivations
and stickiness
Wenjie Zhang, Yun Xu and Haichao Zheng
School of Economic Information Engineering,
Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, China
Abstract
Purpose –Based on the theory of customer citizenship behavior (CCB), the purpose of this paper is to explore
the antecedents and consequences of investor citizenship behavior in the field of crowdfunding and have an
in-depth study of the interaction effect between investors’perceptions of novelty and investors’motivations.
Design/methodology/approach –Based on the CCB theory and self-determination theory, the authors
develop hypotheses and collect questionnaire data (a sample of 226 crowdfunding investors) from
crowdfunding websites to test models and get conclusions by SPSS and smartPLS 2.0.
Findings –The results indicate that internal and external motivations significantly influence investors’
citizenship behavior, which further affects investors’stickiness intentions. Furthermore, results show that
investors’perceptions of novelty moderate the relationships between internal/external motivations and
citizenship behaviors.
Originality/value –This paper offers an in-depth explanation of the citizenship behaviors in crowdfunding,
which could be an example for studying the motivations of investors’citizenship behaviors and could also
serve as a starting point to introduce the stickiness intention theory of e-commerce and virtual community
into crowdfunding area. In addition, this study also made an empirical analysis of how the perceived project
novelty affects the relationships between investors’motivations and citizenship behaviors.
Keywords Motivation, Crowdfunding, Citizenship behavior, Stickiness
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Crowdfunding refers to the efforts by entrepreneurial individuals and groups –technical,
cultural and social –to fund their ventures by drawing on relatively small contributions
from a relatively large number of individuals using the internet, without standard financial
intermediaries (Fornell and Larcker, 1981; Mollick, 2014). Entrepreneurs can promote their
projects with creative ideas through crowdfunding platforms to attract investors, and
investors who are interested in those projects might provide financial support for it.
As an implementation of open innovation, successful crowdfunding projects bring
convenience and potential opportunities for both entrepreneurs and investors, which
promotes diversified economic development of country and region. The World Bank
predicted that crowdfunding investment in developing countries will rise to $96bn by 2025,
of which in China is expected to reach $46–$50bn. According to Renchuang Consulting, in
the first half of 2018, there were 48,935 crowdfunding projects in China, of which 40,274
were successful, accounting for 82.30 percent, and the total amount of financing was as high
as $200m, by the year-on-year growth of 24.46 percent.
Online Information Review
Vol. 43 No. 4, 2019
pp. 584-599
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-09-2017-0271
Received 27 September 2017
Revised 3 July 2018
22 January 2019
Accepted 4 May 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
This research is supported by the Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science fund
(18YJAZH142), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (JBK190203 3), and
Science and Technology Projects of Sichuan Provincial Science and Technology Department
(18YYJC1655).
584
OIR
43,4
All the interested parties are concerned about the success of the project. There are many
factors that affect the success of crowdfunding, among which investors’behaviors play an
important role. The most fundamental research is investors’participation behavior, that is,
the motivation for investors to be attracted to and participate in projects, which has been
extensively studied. Furthermore, based on participatory behavior, investors’citizenship
behavior will bring additional benefits to projects, such as sharing, feedback and so on. We
have reason to believe this kind of voluntary behavior will greatly contribute to the success
of the project. In addition, compared with traditional financing channels, crowdfunding
projects are driven by innovation, and it is creative ideas that attract many investors. The
novelty of projects is one of the factors that affect the participation of investors and the
success of projects. Therefore, it is very valuable to discuss the causes and effects of
crowdfunding investors’citizenship behaviors and explore the role of project novelty in it.
Although crowdfunding has gained unprecedented attention in recent years in the
academic field, the research is still at the initial stage. The topics are focused on the
conception of crowdfunding, the influential factors of success and the motivations of
participation (Gerber et al., 2012; Lin et al., 2014). In view of the novelty and rapid
development of crowdfunding and the research gap of existing literatures, this paperwill
focus on the study of investors’behaviors. The three key issues of the study
areasfollows.
Firstly, most literature focused on the motivations of investors’participation, while
ignored the citizenship behavior of investors. Harms used theory of consumption value as a
framework to capture five value dimensions relevant for driving motives to participate in
crowdfunding activities. Ordanini et al. (2011) argued that patronage, social participation,
monetary contributions, innovative orientation and social identification are key factors for
investors to participate in projects. Unlike the general behavior of participation, customer
citizenship behavior (CCB) is unprompted actions by individual customers, which are not
directly or explicitly expected or rewarded but may have an impact on a firm’s interests and
performance (Groth, 2005). Crowdfunding investors’citizenship behavior can make huge
contributions to the success of crowdfunding projects through effective recommendation
and feedback. Drawing on the previous study, information of the project (risk, novelty and
social responsibility) could influence investors’citizenship behavior in crowdfunding
(Haichao et al., 2015). However, scholars hardly study the investors’own motivations of their
citizenship behavior, that is, why investors may do spontaneous actions. Therefore,
exploring the motivation of citizenship behavior of crowdfunding investors will enable us to
understand the reasons for such unpaid behavior, and help enterprises better attract and
maximize the enthusiasm of investors.
Furthermore, we need to know whether the CCB of investors have a positive impact on
the project. If a project or entrepreneurs could get sustained attention and support from
investors, there is a good chance the project will succeed and the entrepreneurs achieve their
long-term goals by one project after another. In other words, the sustained attention and
support is the stickiness intention of investors in crowdfunding. Unfortunately, there is still
a vacancy in this research area. Therefore, it is necessary to make clear the relationship
between the CCB and the stickiness intention of investors, which will demonstrate the
importance of investors’citizenship behavior and provide ways to enhance the sustained
attention and support from investors.
At last, crowdfunding can often help entrepreneurs finance innovative ideas. Products
with high novelty can bring people more surprises, and people are more inclined to spread
surprising things, so investors tend toinvest,toparticipateinandtomake
recommendations and feedback for the project with higher degree of novelty (Haichao
et al., 2015). However, scholars did not study the motivations of the investors’citizenship
behavior, nor did they have an in-depth study of the interaction effect between investors’
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Crowdfunding
investors’
citizenship
behaviors
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