Is restaurant crowdfunding immune to the COVID-19 pandemic?

Purpose In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating impact on global health care and the economy. The restaurant industry has been especially hit hard by the statewide “stay-at-home” orders. To get back on track, many of these businesses need capital. A new and effective form of fundraising for business startups is crowdfunding (CF). However, there has been little research on the pandemic impact on CF. This study aims to fill this gap by investigating the pandemic-related impact on restaurant CF. Design/methodology/approach This study extracted all 2,686 restaurant CF projects in the USA from the Kickstarter platform from April 2010 to January 2021. By conducting descriptive analyses and multiple logistic regression models, this study examined the pandemic impact on CF success. Findings This study finds that, while controlling the effects of other determinants, businesses in the midst of the pandemic are more likely to be successfully funded than businesses unaffected by the pandemic. Findings also reveal that restaurant startups lowered their funding goals and posted more updates/comments/pledge levels during the pandemic, which made projects more likely to be selected as a “Project We Love” and increased the odds of funding success. However, mentioning COVID-19-related information or locating projects in “red zones” are not found to have any significant direct or moderating impact on the funding success. Research limitations/implications This study pioneers the research topic restaurant CF and attempts to raise the research attention of small- and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurial financing. Using quantitative methods, it provides a new perspective on pandemic-impact research. Social exchange theory is extended to the context of reward-based CF under crisis. Finally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first investigation of the possible moderating effect of project location on the relationship between restaurant CF characteristics and success. Practical implications The findings of this study suggest restaurateurs to be confident about the fundraising of their startup business through reward-based CF, even when located within so-called pandemic red zones, and perform appropriate communication strategies while using the reward-based CF. Originality/value This study is one of the earliest to examine the main and moderating effects of the pandemic-related factors on business CF in the hospitality realm. The findings are reference for researchers and restaurateurs on fundraising in a crisis context.

Is there a gender gap in equity-based crowdfunding?

Compared to their male peers, female entrepreneurs tend to face greater obstacles in raising venture funding from business angels, venture capitalists, and financial institutions. In this paper, we investigate whether this gender gap also exists in equity crowdfunding. Based on data from the German equity crowdfunding market, we find that ventures with and without female managing directors are equally successful in raising capital when launching their first equity crowdfunding campaign. In contrast, the former are significantly less successful than their peers in seasoned equity crowdfunding campaigns, and this disparity cannot be fully explained by differences in other venture-related or entrepreneur-related characteristics. However, we also find that the gender gap in seasoned offerings narrows if female entrepreneurs set more ambitious funding thresholds. Overall, our results indicate that pitching their equity crowdfunding campaigns in a more promotion-oriented way is a sensible strategy for female entrepreneurs to improve funding success.

The Interdependence of Research Funding Concentration, Policy Priorities, and Problem Choice

The prioritisation of research funding towards a small elite of researchers and research topics of "strategic" importance are becoming a norm across national research systems. Researchers are increasingly worried that such steering hampers the diversity of scientific approaches and problems addressed. However, the effects of increased steering of who and what receives research funds are not well known. I use evidence from 65,000 research grants awarded by seven research councils in the United Kingdom and fifteen Danish research funders to investigate how strong funding concentration and thematic targeting leads to less topical diversity. Researchers in the very top of the funding distribution primarily investigate topics and disciplines with the most funding success, and research output form targeted funding schemes overlaps with that from investigatorledgrants. Moreover, priorities from private funders line up with the type of researchfunded by public research councils. The findings highlight how steering through funding decisions can multiply

How much do social connections matter in fundraising outcomes?

This study examines the role of social connections and network centrality in attracting funders to crowdfunding campaigns. We classify social connections as either external (e.g., Facebook) or internal (e.g., investing in online platforms through resource exchange). Drawing from the 108,463 crowdfunding campaigns on the online platform Kickstarter from April 21, 2009, to July 24, 2019, we apply external linkages and online followers to estimate the effect of external social connections. We construct a digraph network for the internal social connections and use PageRank, HITS, and centrality to obtain the weights of the nodes. Next, we compare the performance change of several prediction algorithms by feeding social connection-related variables. This study has several findings. First, for external social connections, having more online followers improves the funding success rate of a campaign. Second, for internal social connections, only authority and degree in centrality positively affect the number of funders and the campaign’s financing progress among the weights of the nodes. Third, using social connection variables improves the prediction algorithms for funding outcomes. Fourth, external social connections exert greater funding outcomes than internal social connections. Fourth, entrepreneurs should extend their external social connections to their internal social connections, and network centrality expedites project financing. Fifth, the effect of social connections on fundraising outcomes varies among the campaign categories. Fundraisers who are online influencers should leverage their online social connections, notably for the project categories that matter.

A Cross-sectional Comparison of Utilization of Medical Crowdfunding for Global Health

The online solicitation of public donations has become an important financing option for health care expenses, intensified by increasing costs and deficits of universal public systems (1). With growing internet access and success of the largest social crowdfunding platform, GoFundMe, online appeals for medical causes have grown significantly over the last decade in low- to high-income countries. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively describe the use of GoFundMe as a crowdfunding platform for global health initiatives given its supremacy in the social crowdfunding market. Three different cohorts (n=100 each) of online solicitation were examined as a cross-section comparing global health appeals to those for personal health care and animal activism. Variables included the purpose for crowdfunding, the characteristics of beneficiaries and campaigns, and the factors associated with funding success. Our cross-sectional review found that global health campaigns were focused on voluntourism opportunities compared to more specific, individualized appeals for those in need. Global health campaigns appeared to be the least ambitious and generally the least successful of those reviewed. Grouping the most and least successful campaigns between the different cohorts, global health appears to be more successful when targeting a larger population to donate smaller amounts of money and relying on sharing via social media. We suggest that compared to online solicitation for personal health and animal activism objectives, crowdfunding on GoFundMe has unrealized potential as a tool for global health initiatives. More work should be conducted using different crowdfunding platforms and a more longitudinal review in order to expand on these findings and their implications on health care provision in the countries examined. Furthermore, future inquiry is needed to understand the social and ethical implications of online solicitation for global health endeavors in order to inform policy and promote discussion around equity and accessibility.

Analysing Sentiments in Peer Review Reports: Evidence from Two Science Funding Agencies

Using a novel combination of methods and datasets from two national funding agency contexts, this study explores whether review sentiment can be used as a reliable proxy for understanding peer reviewer opinions. We measure reviewer opinions via their review sentiments both on specific review subjects and on proposals’ overall funding worthiness with three different methods: manual content analysis and two dictionary-based sentiment analysis algorithms (TextBlob and VADER). The reliability of review sentiment to detect reviewer opinions is addressed by its correlation with review scores and proposals’ rankings and funding decisions. We find in our samples that 1) review sentiments correlate with review scores or rankings positively, and the correlation is stronger for manually coded than for algorithmic results; 2) manual and algorithmic results are overall correlated across different funding programmes, review sections, languages, and agencies, but the correlations are not strong; 3) manually coded review sentiments can quite accurately predict whether proposals are funded, whereas the two algorithms predict funding success with moderate accuracy. Results suggest that manual analysis of review sentiments can provide a reliable proxy of grant reviewer opinions, whereas the two SA algorithms can be useful only in some specific situations. Peer Review https://publons.com/publon/10.1162/qss_a_00156

Community Support or Funding Amount: Actual Contribution of Reward-Based Crowdfunding to Market Success of Video Game Projects on Kickstarter

The research provides empirical evidence differentiating between market success and funding success in reward-based crowdfunding campaigns of video games and hypothesizes that the actual contribution of crowdfunding is more stemming from community support and feedback rather than funding amount. The paper uses publicly available data by combining three different sources. Project data from Kickstarter, a large crowdfunding website, in the video game category are extracted and matched with market success variables of ratings and revenues from two other public sources namely Metacritic and Steamspy. Regression results indicate that once the project is successfully funded, the funding amount does not have a significant effect on market success variables. On the other hand, the number of backers as a community support variable is a significant determinant of market success in terms of higher revenues and ratings for a project. Whether the project was successfully funded or not moderates some of the relationships. Prior literature is predominantly focused on crowdfunding success in terms of financing. Yet, this study empirically demonstrates that funding does not necessarily indicate that projects will be successful in the market and further shows the actual contribution of crowdfunding to the market success of video game projects is the community engagement, not the funding amount. This study contributes to the rapidly emerging crowdfunding literature by extending its boundaries from the crowdfunding platforms themselves to the differentiated effects of crowdfunding on market success, which has not been studied thoroughly. This paper provides a new avenue of research by suggesting not solely focusing on funding outcomes but understanding, defining and explaining the dynamics of the community aspect in crowdfunding platforms with their repercussions on market success. Future work can also highlight potential differences in these effects between product groups, as well as more holistically assess market success and capture interactions within the community on crowdfunding platforms.

Greening crowdfunding campaigns: an investigation of message framing and effective communication strategies for funding success

PurposeRecognising the growing importance of environmental and sustainable activities and the role of communication strategies in soliciting their financing, this work investigates the influence of message framing, green emphasis and quantitative information on the probability of green crowdfunding campaigns' success.Design/methodology/approachThis analysis is based on crowdfunding campaigns published between 2015 and 2020 on the Indiegogo platform in the category “Community projects – Environment”. The study develops an in-depth qualitative content analysis of the projects before performing an empirical examination to determine funding causes.FindingsCommunication strategies (message framing, green emphasis and quantitative goals) affect funding success. However, project category moderates the impact of message framing and green emphasis on campaign success. While positive framing increases agri-food campaign success, negative framing is more effective for clean energy and climate preservation projects. Moreover, indication of a quantitative goal and a marked green emphasis in a project's presentation increase campaign success, but a too marked green emphasis is only effective for agri-food projects.Practical implicationsGreen entrepreneurs and campaign managers must work carefully on their projects' communication, accounting for the type of product proposed, emphasising green components in its description and utilising quantitative information to present future goals. These strategies maximise backers' responses and enable entrepreneurs to obtain funding. The authors’ findings may be extended to other contexts, including the banking sector, to craft effective communication strategies for green financial products.Originality/valueBy applying framing theory in a new context (i.e. the online financing of green entrepreneurs), this study identifies new campaign success determinants and provides evidence for the moderating role of project category. Furthermore, the study highlights the need to develop different communication strategies for social and environmental-oriented projects.