Must-have for Crowd-funding Projects: Credibility

The success of a crowd-funding project can be attributed to various reasons, among which, backer's (also known as 'investor', or 'funder') perception of project credibility may be a salient one. The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which perceived project credibility can affect a backer's investment decision. We examine the factors that could influence the building of perceived project credibility by testing the proposed research model using survey data. Analysis results indicate that perceived project credibility has a significantly positive effect on backer's investment intention. Furthermore, information quality and source credibility are two key determinants of perceived project credibility. This study contributes to crowd-funding literature by enriching the list of successful factors for fund-raising with project credibility. The study also has practical implications because it explains why and how a backer's perception of project credibility can be improved.