An Interdisciplinary Review of Investor Decision-Making in Crowdfunding

A quickly growing body of research is exploring the emerging crowdfunding phenomenon. However, in contrast to traditional startup financing or bank loans, decision-making for investments in crowdfunded ventures is not well researched. Many individual studies investigate aspects that influence investor decision-making in crowdfunding campaigns, but an integrated view of those aspects was not provided to date. We conduct a systematic and interdisciplinary literature review to examine which factors influence investment decision-making in crowdfunding. Based on the analysis of 69 articles we construct a comprehensive framework of relevant influence factors. We elicit systematic differences between crowdfunding and traditional investments, such as venture capital. The differences are: an even higher impact of social capital, the substitution of necessary with available information, and high impact of the digital context. We discuss how information systems (IS) drive those differences. Finally, we derive take-aways for IS researchers and practitioners with focus on interfaces and interactions