The Impact of Geography on the Success of Prosocial Crowdfunding

ABSTRACT

Prosocial crowdfunding is gaining popularity as an alternative tool to traditional offline charity. While the success of crowdfunding projects aimed at pursuing commercial gains has been studied extensively, less research has addressed the factors that affect the success of prosocial crowdfunding campaigns. More specifically, there is even less research related to geographical factors. Building on charitable giving literature, we employ the lens of moral cosmopolitanism to hypothesize how geographical factors impact the success of prosocial crowdfunding campaigns. We conducted our investigation on a sample of 350 campaigns launched on StartSomeGood and found that contributors, despite a hype on cosmopolitan responsibility induced by digital platforms, prefer recipients in developed countries and, when donating to recipients in developing countries, show a preference for initiators from developed countries.

KEY WORDS AND PHRASES:

• Crowdfunding
• prosocial crowdfunding
• developed versus developing countries
• charitable giving
• philanthropic geography
• online giving
• online philanthropy

Acknowledgments

Sincere gratitude is expressed to Professor Rotem Shneor and Dr. Liang Zhao for their invaluable support during the data collection phase at the University of Agder Crowdfunding Research Center, Kristiansand, Norway. Their support and expertise were valuable in shaping the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ http://www.startsomegood.com

² Guo et al. [47] in their study on Kickstarter claim that there is home bias; however, their findings seem to reveal the opposite: The distance between initiator and contributor is much bigger than in traditional venture capital funding as reported, for example, by Cumming and Dai [29].

³ See, for example, the campaign “Daniel’s Academy—English Medium School in Pakistan,” which was created by an organization in Texas, USA, to support education in Pakistan (teaching English language to Pakistani students) (https://startsomegood.com/danielsacademypakistan), or the campaign “Effects of Ebola—A Race Against Community Collapse,” which was created by an organization in New York, USA, to help people fight against Ebola disease in Western Africa (https://startsomegood.com/wai).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thaer Atawna

Thaer Atawna ([email protected]; corresponding author) holds a Ph.D. in economics and management from the University of Genoa, Italy. As a part of his Ph.D. program, he spent a 3-month research period at the Crowdfunding Research Center of the University of Agder, Norway. He has more than a decade of professional expertise spanning finance, accounting, and academia. Dr. Atawna has published in such journals as the European Journal of Innovation Management and International Review of Financial Analysis.

Stefania Testa

Stefania Testa ([email protected]) is a full professor at the University of Genoa. Her main research interests concern knowledge management and innovation, including the role of social media in innovation, the role of knowledge and collaboration in innovation processes, open innovation practices, and sustainable innovation. She has published in such journals as Economic Geography, Technovation, Information & Management, Organization and Management, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, and International Journal of Production Research.

Silvano Cincotti

Silvano Cincotti ([email protected]) is professor of economic and management at the University of Genoa. He is co-founder and head of the research center DOGE and coordinator of the bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. programs in management engineering at the University of Genoa. Dr. Cincotti was dean of the Advanced School IANUA and president of the IANUA Consortium. He is an author of more than 200 scientific articles and is editor-in-chief of REPE, and a member of the editorial boards of JEIC and EIER and of the scientific associations AiIG, EAEPE, and ESHIA. He carries out scientific activity in economics, management, and finance with particular attention to economic policy, sustainable development, social responsibility, financial engineering, and change management. His activity has been carried out in the context of more than 50 projects funded at national and international levels. He was principal investigator of the EU FP6 IST-FET EURACE project and of the EU FP7 GSS SYMPHONY project, and a member of the steering board of the Italian HUB of the EU-FET FuturICT Flagship.