Abstract
This paper examines how (1) a crowdfunding campaign's prosociality (the production of a public versus private good), (2) the social network structure (embeddedness) among individuals advocating for the campaign on social media, and (3) the volume of social media activity around a campaign jointly determine fundraising from the crowd. Integrating the emerging literature on social media and crowdfunding with the literature on social networks and public goods, we theorize that prosocially, public-oriented crowdfunding campaigns will benefit disproportionately from social media activity when advocates' social media networks exhibit greater levels of embeddedness. Drawing on a panel dataset that combines campaign fundraising activity associated with more than 1,000 campaigns on Kickstarter with campaign-related social media activity on Twitter, we construct network-level measures of embeddedness between and amongst individuals initiating the latter, in terms of transitivity and topological overlap. We demonstrate that Twitter activity drives a disproportionate increase in fundraising for prosocially oriented crowdfunding campaigns when posting users' networks exhibit greater embeddedness. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings, highlighting how our work extends prior research on the role of embeddedness in peer influence by demonstrating the joint roles of message features and network structure in the peer influence process. Our work suggests that when a transmitter's message is prosocial or cause-oriented, embeddedness will play a stronger role in determining influence. We also discuss the broader theoretical implications for the literatures on social media, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, and private contributions to public goods. Finally, we highlight the practical implications for marketers, campaign organizers, and crowdfunding platform operators.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1211-1224 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | MIS Quarterly: Management Information Systems |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 1 2018 |
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Keywords
- Crowdfunding
- Network embeddedness
- Peer influence
- Prosocial campaigns
- Public good
- Social marketing
- Social media
- Social sharing
Cite this
Embeddedness, prosociality, and social influence : Evidence from online crowdfunding. / Hong, Yili; Hu, Yuheng; Burtch, Gordon.
In: MIS Quarterly: Management Information Systems, Vol. 42, No. 4, 01.12.2018, p. 1211-1224.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Embeddedness, prosociality, and social influence
T2 - Evidence from online crowdfunding
AU - Hong, Yili
AU - Hu, Yuheng
AU - Burtch, Gordon
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - This paper examines how (1) a crowdfunding campaign's prosociality (the production of a public versus private good), (2) the social network structure (embeddedness) among individuals advocating for the campaign on social media, and (3) the volume of social media activity around a campaign jointly determine fundraising from the crowd. Integrating the emerging literature on social media and crowdfunding with the literature on social networks and public goods, we theorize that prosocially, public-oriented crowdfunding campaigns will benefit disproportionately from social media activity when advocates' social media networks exhibit greater levels of embeddedness. Drawing on a panel dataset that combines campaign fundraising activity associated with more than 1,000 campaigns on Kickstarter with campaign-related social media activity on Twitter, we construct network-level measures of embeddedness between and amongst individuals initiating the latter, in terms of transitivity and topological overlap. We demonstrate that Twitter activity drives a disproportionate increase in fundraising for prosocially oriented crowdfunding campaigns when posting users' networks exhibit greater embeddedness. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings, highlighting how our work extends prior research on the role of embeddedness in peer influence by demonstrating the joint roles of message features and network structure in the peer influence process. Our work suggests that when a transmitter's message is prosocial or cause-oriented, embeddedness will play a stronger role in determining influence. We also discuss the broader theoretical implications for the literatures on social media, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, and private contributions to public goods. Finally, we highlight the practical implications for marketers, campaign organizers, and crowdfunding platform operators.
AB - This paper examines how (1) a crowdfunding campaign's prosociality (the production of a public versus private good), (2) the social network structure (embeddedness) among individuals advocating for the campaign on social media, and (3) the volume of social media activity around a campaign jointly determine fundraising from the crowd. Integrating the emerging literature on social media and crowdfunding with the literature on social networks and public goods, we theorize that prosocially, public-oriented crowdfunding campaigns will benefit disproportionately from social media activity when advocates' social media networks exhibit greater levels of embeddedness. Drawing on a panel dataset that combines campaign fundraising activity associated with more than 1,000 campaigns on Kickstarter with campaign-related social media activity on Twitter, we construct network-level measures of embeddedness between and amongst individuals initiating the latter, in terms of transitivity and topological overlap. We demonstrate that Twitter activity drives a disproportionate increase in fundraising for prosocially oriented crowdfunding campaigns when posting users' networks exhibit greater embeddedness. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings, highlighting how our work extends prior research on the role of embeddedness in peer influence by demonstrating the joint roles of message features and network structure in the peer influence process. Our work suggests that when a transmitter's message is prosocial or cause-oriented, embeddedness will play a stronger role in determining influence. We also discuss the broader theoretical implications for the literatures on social media, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, and private contributions to public goods. Finally, we highlight the practical implications for marketers, campaign organizers, and crowdfunding platform operators.
KW - Crowdfunding
KW - Network embeddedness
KW - Peer influence
KW - Prosocial campaigns
KW - Public good
KW - Social marketing
KW - Social media
KW - Social sharing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85055960961&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85055960961&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.25300/MISQ/2018/14105
DO - 10.25300/MISQ/2018/14105
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85055960961
VL - 42
SP - 1211
EP - 1224
JO - MIS Quarterly: Management Information Systems
JF - MIS Quarterly: Management Information Systems
SN - 0276-7783
IS - 4
ER -