Fifteen years of crowdfunding – a bibliometric analysis

ABSTRACT

Crowdfunding emerged as a flexible method of financing various projects during the financial crisis but has since developed into a fully fledged financing instrument that requires special attention from the academia and legislators. The purpose of this study is to perform a quantitative analysis of the up-to-date crowdfunding research employing bibliometric analysis. We have used data from the Scopus database and have extracted a number of 1951 research papers. Using VOSviewer software, we have looked into the yearly research production, the categories in which the studies fall, citation records, highly cited authors and papers, most prolific authors and country of origin in crowdfunding. We grouped keywords into clusters and identified emerging trends. We then revealed the thematic progression of the occurring keywords into four time ranges. We find that crowdfunding research has been growing steadily from 2006 to date, with a particular focus on business and finance. The most productive countries are highly developed economies, but other countries have started exploring crowdfunding, too. The most cited references are published between 2013 and 2016, which is when the bases of this stream of research have been established. We finally discuss the theoretical and practical implications.

KEYWORDS:

• Crowdfunding
• bibliometric analysis
• emerging trend
• hot topics
• COVID-19
• VOSviewer

Disclosure statement

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

Availability of data and material

Data will be available on request.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hasnan Baber

Dr Hasnan Baber is an Assistant Professor of management, strategy, and entrepreneurship at the American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE. He has received a Ph.D. degree in management studies from Woosong University, Daejeon, South Korea, and two master's degrees in business administration and public administration. He was awarded as a meritorious student during his doctoral program. He has authored or co-authored more than 60 research articles indexed and listed in Scopus, SSCI, and ABDC. He has been featured in the top 2% of scientists list by Stanford University in 2022 and 2023. He is a Guest Editor, an Associate Editor, an editorial board member, and an advisor for various reputed journals. His areas of research are crowdfunding, fintech, entrepreneurship, sustainability, technology adoption, and digitalization.

Mina Fanea-Ivanovici

Mina Fanea-Ivanovici received the PhD degree in Economics in 2010. She is currently a Professor and a doctoral supervisor at the Department of Economics and Economic Policies at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. Her main research interests revolve around areas such as creative economy, creative industries, cultural economy, crowdfunding, digitalisation, knowledge management, intercultural dialogue and intercultural competencies. She has published numerous articles, book chapters and books in reputed journals and publishing houses. In 2016, she worked as an independent expert in charge of drafting and revisiting Romania’s Strategy for Culture and National Heritage.