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Entrepreneurial financing affects the survival and growth of new ventures. Because of the “liability of newness”, traditional financing channels may be hesitant to finance new ventures. Thus, new channels should be discovered and developed for new venture financing. Crowdfunding has recently emerged as an innovative and feasible channel for start-up financing in addition to traditional fundraising sources.

Summary

Although research on crowdfunding has been popular in past decades, researchers’ understanding of the crucial success factors of crowdfunding remains limited. Therefore, taking reward-based crowdfunding as the research context, this thesis comprehensively explores the possible success determinants of crowdfunding campaigns through three different theoretical aspects: supporters’ utilitarian value, hedonic value and motivations The findings of this thesis shows that the pleasure obtained during the crowdfunding process is positively associated with crowdfunding success. Besides, entrepreneurs’ empathy and impression management are also significantly associated with reward-based crowdfunding results. In addition, this thesis also explores why the satisfaction of backer’s extrinsic motivation may not always lead to crowdfunding success. The findings of this thesis not only provide meaningful insights into the literature about crowdfunding in general, but also offer practical tips for both entrepreneurs and crowdfunding platform administrators.