Reward versus philanthropy motivation in Crowdfunding behavior

Crowdfunding is an online platform service that helps creators develop their projects by collecting small amounts of money from the public. This paper examines the relationship between funder motivations and actual funding behavior on crowdfunding platforms. We combine two types ofdatasets; namely, funder surveys and actual transaction data, to empirically probe the dynamics among reward motivation, philanthropy motivation, funding timing, and funding amount. We further examine how the dynamics are moderated by funders' demographic characteristics. We find that reward motivation is associated with late funding, whereas philanthropic motivation is associated with early funding. When it comes to the funding amount, philanthropy motivation is positively associated with the amount of funding, especially in the earlier stages before reaching the goal amount. On the other hand, the effect of reward motivation on funding amount is, on average, positive, although very marginal. Overall, our results provide new insights for theories of contributions in crowd-driven markets.