• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.11
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• pp.644-660
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• 2016

With the development of Fintech industry, research interest in crowdfunding is growing. Crowdfunding, originated from crowdsourcing, involves the participation of many individuals' contributions to funding a new project. Specifically, lending based crowdfunding provides a platform for raising funds in the form of loans by connecting borrowers to funders(investors) via Internet, not through traditional financial institutions. Recently, lending based crowdfunding attracts much attention as a new investment alternative; however, there is a lack of research about lending based crowdfunding. This study aims to examine the factors influencing an investor's participation in lending based crowdfunding by focusing on platform features, investor features, and project features. Based on the findings, this study discusses theoretical and practical implications for promoting the crowd's investments through crowdfunding platforms.

• Informatization Policy
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.3-19
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• 2014

Crowd-funding platforms, which enable to collect funds from individuals, have recently gained growing interests around the world. This study intends to provide future research directions for the crowd-funding by reviewing past research works. For this purpose, two research themes are selected - (1) motivations to participate in crowd-funding and (2) critical success factors for the project funding. The motivations are analyzed from both perspectives of fund demanders and suppliers. The critical success factors are investigated by using four dimensions: fund demanders, fund suppliers, relationships between demanders and suppliers, and project characteristics. Using the implications found from the past research, this paper offers future research issues necessary for the growth of crowd-funding platforms.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.237-247
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• 2018

In this paper, a research model was designed to investigate the factors influencing the intention to the crowdfunding participator of China. The research model includes the platform factors, investor factors, and social factors, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and funding participants' intention. In this research, the data was collected by online survey, and in final analysis, 439 participators' questionnaires were used. The empirical paper proves research hypothesis by using SPSS 23.0. The results of the study are as follows: the crowdfunding platform factors, social factors and the participants' individual factors partially give positive effects to perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness; perceived ease of use gives positive effects to perceived usefulness. In addition, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness have positive effects to participational intention. This paper provides a useful scheme for the better operation and promotion of crowdfunding. In the future, a comparative study of different types of crowdfunding is needed.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.397-404
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• 2021

The web-based crowdfunding platform provides small-cap companies the opportunity to reduce financial risks and to reliably produce new products through pre-orders. Meanwhile, crowdfunding projects are also helping companies as a channel to test new products before mass production. Despite these advantages, from the point of view of businesses and consumers, it is true that web-based crowdfunding platforms have limitations in the retail environment. For example, the limited social elements of a web-based platform are somewhat in conflict with the basic characteristics of crowdfunding projects - which inevitably demand high social influences for the success. As such, understanding the mechanisms of social factors of crowdfunding platforms from the consumers' perspective is important. Therefore, in this study, we empirically tested the effect of social factors of crowdfunding platform on consumer participation and evaluation. Based on the Social Influence Theory and Social Presence Theory, we developed a conceptual framework where the social group size and social presence of other backers were the independent variables and the purchaser's intention to participate as the dependent variable. In the results, the size of the social group size and the perceived social presence have a significant positive effect on purchaser's participation intent. In addition, the social presence had a greater influence on the purchaser's intention to participate than the size of the sponsor's social group. We believe that our findings contribute to the extant literature by empirically demonstrating the valid effect of social factors of crowdfunding platforms on consumer evaluations.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.97-105
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• 2014

This study attempts to review the theories and related literatures on crowd funding and build the framework to understand the core concepts of crowd funding. In addition, I explore the applicability of crowd funding platforms for start-ups. For this purpose, I analyze the framework based on the life cycles of projects on crowd funding with the components of stake-holders. Furthermore, I review the results of previous outstanding literature on pros and cons of crowd funding to identify the applicability of crowd funding for start-ups. The results show that the use of crowd funding platform alleviates the risks involved with the information goods which occupy major portion of the projects listed on crowd funding have unique cost structure with high fixed cost and very low variable cost. Consequently, crowd funding is identified as a platform for start-ups of information goods by leveraging the wisdom of crowd. However, crowd funding may not work as an effective platform for start-ups if group thinking emerges. The study provides an implication that it provides a framework for understanding crowd funding and its applicability for start-ups, which can support government's policy for creative economy. Additional empirical research analyzing the data on the projects listed on crowd funding platforms in Korea will be performed in the succeeding study.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.365-374
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• 2021

Recently, the high growth rate and advantages of the crowdfunding market have also led to increased participation of brands and companies, and this also applies to fashion business. Risk has been noted to be a key factor in consumer behavior in crowdfunding. With the high-risk context of crowdfunding where supporters inevitably bear to pay full amount of price before receiving the actual products. Factors enhancing or inhibiting perceived risk of crowdfunding need to be explored. The past literature on perceived risk and consumer attitudes in crowdfunding has expanded, but it has rarely covered the context of experience goods such as fashion products. In addition, the platform characteristics in relation to perceived risk should be addressed. The current study attempts to address the effect of the perceived amount of information offered in a fashion crowdfunding project on perceived risk and the intention to participate in the project. For the experiment of this study, a fictitious crowdfunding page for fashion products was set as the stimuli. A total of 240 Korean participants were recruited and their responses were statistically analyzed using SPSS 24.0 software. In the results, the greater the amount of detailed information about the fashion crowdfunding project, the higher the intention to participate the project. The greater the amount of information provided, the lower the perceived risk of consumers. Moreover, the lowered perceived risk affected the intention of participate. Perceived risk has a partial mediation in the relationship between the amount of information and intention to participate. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.560-569
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• 2015

Crowd funding is the method of raising money for a project, companies from a large group of people via the Internet, in return for future products or equity. Kickstarter is the largest and most successful crowdfunding site where creative projects raise reward based funding. Drawing on dataset of 80,267 projects with combined funding over $1.3b from 8.1m people, this paper suggest that backer select project based on their preference on the project, instead profitability of the project. It suggests that well-established platform and big size of network increases the chance of success of the project due to a ripple effect and blockbuster effects. Clear communication about the project's idea and goal is highly correlated with success. Regular communication on the project site, such as by constant progress updates, helps the success of the project. Equity-based crowdfunding is emerging as an innovative means of raising capital for businesses, so it has been receiving a lot of attention and expectation from the government and the market. The findings of this paper and others will help to get some understanding and insight into equity-based crowdfunding. However, Kickstarter differs from equity-based crowdfunding in the goals of the backers. Kickstarter's backers are not investors, they are contributors. To understand equity-based crowdfunding, the subject will need further study.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.65-82
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• 2020

Start-ups often use crowdfunding platforms such as Wadiz to get financing from corporate investors and general public. These platforms include functions to increase participant activity through the number of comments, interest and online word-of-mouth. This study aims to elucidate how these functions related to a participant activity exhibit mediating effects on a success of crowdfunding and an achievement rate of targeted investment amount. To this end, the individual variables such as progress period, target amount, venture company, experience of attracting investment, possession of intellectual property rights, a career of the representative and an award experience of the representative were classified into the project characteristics, the company characteristics and the representative characteristics through not only previous studies but also interviews with investment professionals and platform operators. Afterwards, this study went through an empirical verification process using a structural equation model that has both crowdfunding performance and participant activity, which is the independent and mediating factors of three perspectives, as well as the dependent variables. In other words, this study analyzes how the characteristics of three perspectives affect the participant activity and how the participant activity had the mediating effects on the crowdfunding performance. In addition, it derives how the analysis results mentioned above vary according to business types (internet services, culture/art, manufacturing/distribution) and investment styles (stock type and bond type). It is expected that this study will help not only in deriving the factors affecting the performance of an investment type crowdfunding but also in preparing the measures to increase a participant activity.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.54-62
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• 2014

Crowdfunding, a way of raising small size investments or donations from numerous individuals, mostly through internet to fund a project, has attracted global interests. The growth of the social network platform has made crowdfunding easier especially for those in the arts and culture sector. Despite the growth of such vehicle, there has been not much empirical research on the subject. We investigated the relationships between the information in the web sites and its contribution to the success in fundraising. We have sampled 161 projects that were uploaded on Tumblbug.com and studied the type of information that lead to a successful fund raise. As a result, we fould that the contents characteristics including motion-pictures, images, and lengthy texts have positive impacts on the success of fundraising. Fundraising rewards did not show any impacts.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.35-51
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• 2019

The two main goals of this study are to derive independent factors affecting the success rate of crowdfunding and to empirically analyze the variation of independent factors' effects on the success of crowdfunding by industry (Internet, culture/art, manufacturing/distribution), and funding type (stock type, bond type). To identify the success factors of crowdfunding for invigoration and strategic utilization, first, several variables were refined after interviews with experts and platform operators with investment experiences in numerous crowdfunding projects. Then, independent factors affecting project involvement were categorized as follows: a characteristic of project, participant activity, and enterprise. Also, the results derived from the influence of independent variables on crowdfunding after moderating effects were driven. Selected independent factors in this study are as follows: crowdfunding period, target amount, visual contents, minimum account money, number of comments, number of SNS followers, level of interest, financial Statement disclosure, investment attraction, venture company, intellectual property rights disclosure, and business operation period. Selected moderating factors in this study are as follows: industry (Internet, culture/art, manufacturing/distribution), and funding type (stock type, bond type). In conclusion, a discussion of the academical and practical implications and a suggestion of directions for further research are explained.