Geography of pledging and application of funds of crowdfunding platforms and the impact on their online notoriety

Abstract

Online crowdfunding is a relatively new way of financing projects and ventures through the internet. This study gives an industry view focusing on the geographic perspective of pledging and application of funds through a model explicating the local and global dimensions. Four possible combinations are then possible: LPLA (Local Pledging/Local Application of funds), LPGA (Local Pledging/Global Application of funds), GPLA (Global Pledging/Local Application of funds) and GPGA (Global Pledging/Global Application of funds). A sample of crowdfunding platforms were analyzed to understand how these characteristics relate with the online notoriety of the platform. The analysis indicates that platforms are experimenting different approaches to the locus of pledging and application of funds and statistical results show that platforms with local characteristics in both pledging and application of funds (LPLA) are outperformed in terms of notoriety by all the remaining combinations.

Date of Award	22 Feb 2013
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Juan Andrei Villarroel Fernandéz (Supervisor)