SUCCESS DRIVERS OF REWARD-BASED CROWDFUNDING: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

The study aims at analyzing the factors that can contribute to the success of a reward-based crowdfunding (CF) campaign from the perspective of asymmetric information. The success, understood as the achievement of the funding target indicated by the proponent, can be considered as a proxy of the overcoming of information barriers. The latter, in fact, may represent a relevant matter due to the functioning of this non-conventional financing model. In particular, in a reward-based CF campaign, two features may exacerbate the informative gap between the funder and the founder of a new initiative, such as: the lack of personal interaction and the absence of financial intermediaries. Both these factors concur to amplify the liability of newness that normally may limit the legitimation of a new project without track records. Therefore, on the basis of previous literature, this study has identified a set of factors which theoretically may support the success of the campaign towards the crowd. The survey focuses on the Italian context, a country less investigated and characterized by a significant digital divide. In particular, this paper shows that financial factors prevail on other and most popular dimensions like the digital social networks and the signals of the project quality. These findings lead to a less naïve and more rational assessment of success drivers of a reward-based CF campaign