Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of creator credibility and backer endorsement on the levels of donation to crowdfunding campaigns in a focal muslim community and to determine the success factors of projects in developing and developed countries. Design/methodology/approach This research adopts a quantitative approach, utilizing 223 crowdfunding projects from LaunchGood to examine the expected connections. The crowdfunding projects in the distinctive data set (Ramadan) are similar, permitting exploration of the role of creator credibility and backer endorsement in a unique context of religious-based crowdfunding activity. Findings Creators’ credibility and backers’ endorsements are decisive factors in crowdfunding success. Results from an additional test related to location (developing and developed countries) suggest that creators’ credibility is more important than backers’ endorsements, especially in developing countries. Research limitations/implications The projects used in the data set are homogenous and take place in a specific context. The limited number of available observations influences the testing function and capacity of the models and variables. Further, the investigation is related to a specific community, so might not be applicable to all communities. Social implications Potential supporters from the community are vital for the success of crowdfunding projects. This study informs campaign efforts in a religious community by stressing the importance of creators’ credibility and backers’ endorsements. The study also sheds light on factors that affect crowdfunding success in developing and developed countries. Originality/value This study helps to explain successful crowdfunding practices in donation-based crowdfunding projects within a religious community context. Results improve scholars’ ability to comprehend individuals’ supporting behavior, providing empirical evidence of creators’ credibility and backers’ endorsement on project success. The study also addresses the determinants of crowdfunding success in developing and developed countries.

Crowdfunding is an innovative concept for a new start-ups seeking financial support for their distinctive and novel projects. Despite their popularity, crowdfunding platforms face several key challenges amongst which is information asymmetry between entrepreneurs and influential backers, where credible information must be disclosed by the founders (entrepreneurs) to the potential "backers" in order to assess the potentiality of the project. In order to fill this gap, we developed and tested a model that examines the signaling interaction between the founder and a potential backer through media and the founders' past success. This model also examines how these two signals (i.e., media and past success) interact so as to mitigate the problem of information asymmetry and to make the project successful. A total of 14,887 projects were extracted from a reward-based platform named Crowdfunder. The data was analyzed by performing Tobit and logistic regression and the model was validated by using the robustness technique. The results strongly mitigate the problem of information asymmetry which improves the rate of success in projects floated on the Crowdfunder platform. We believe that our study will significantly contribute to this nascent yet developing research area by probing for information mechanisms to succeed in crowdfunding.Sustainability 2019, 11, 692 2 of 24 collect a reasonable contribution from a large number of backers. The enormous development of crowdfunding platforms provide a resilient opportunity for sustainable economic development [7]. Despite its popularity, crowdfunding faces several key challenges, one of them being the information asymmetry between founders and influential backers. This is because the project founder has more knowledge of the quality of the product/service while the backers have less information about the intellectual capital and credibility of the project founder [8]. Therefore, the founders must disclose credible information about the value proposition to the potential backers so that they can assess the potentiality of the crowdfunding projects [6]. Belleflamme et al. [9] compared two forms of crowdfunding and discussed the effect of information asymmetry in the choice of crowdfunding form. They concluded that in the presence of information asymmetry, the founders hold more private information related to the product description and quality than the backers. In such a situation, the potential backers prefer to finance the profit-earning scheme rather than pre-ordering so as to protect their financing. Kirmani and Rao [10] found that information asymmetry arose whenever there is a lack of information between the investors and the customers regarding the qualitative attributes of the firm. To alleviate this asymmetric information gap, the potential backers must determine the start-up attributes and the founder's actions that may reflect the prevailing quality of the start-up [11].In crowdfunding, as compared to traditional financial instruments, transactions are mediated on platf...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the effects of service quality (SQ) on outcome variables may shift over time. However, scant attention has been paid to capturing that shift. The current study uses the theory of relationship dynamics to capture the rate and direction of change in the effects of SQ attributes on customer satisfaction (CS) and emotional attachment (EA). For this purpose, the study takes CS-velocity and EA-velocity as dynamic outcomes of SQ. Design/methodology/approach A sample of 306 restaurant consumers responded to a structured questionnaire at three points in time. Confirmatory factor analysis was carried out, followed by analysis of the data through latent growth curve modeling using MPlus (Version 8.1). Findings SQ attributes positively affect CS and EA, but these effects diminish over time, as SQ attributes negatively influence CS-velocity and EA-velocity. In addition, the study demonstrates that dynamic elements strongly impact behavioral intentions (BI). Practical implications The study enables service and relationship marketing managers to better understand the role of SQ attributes in maintaining longitudinal satisfaction, attachment and BI. The insights from this longitudinal investigation help managers to formulate long-term service management and relationship management strategies. Originality/value This study is the first attempt to examine SQ’s dynamic outcomes using longitudinal panel data. It is the first study to introduce EA-velocity as a dynamic construct of EA and the first to examine the relationships of CS-velocity and EA-velocity with BI.

When traditional financial institutions faced difficulties in the task of assisting micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) with capital allocations, crowdfunding can upsurge as an innovative and vibrant vehicle that can support and assist the activity of such MSME’s, by financing their activity and instrumenting the process of risk-sharing. Simultaneously with its enormous growth and popularity, crowdfunding is faced by several key challenges, one of biggest such challenges referring to the problem of information asymmetry that can exist between fundraisers and potential backers. Based on the signaling theory, a research taxonomy has been developed for a comparative analysis between China and the UK. This has been accomplished by retrieving secondary data from the following crowdfunding platforms: Dreamore (Chinese platform) and Crowdfunder (UK platform). The objective of the study is to investigate both the effect and the impact that signals (goal setting, project comments and updates) have upon mitigating the problem of information asymmetry, in order to make the project successful. We have thus deployed an Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression and validated the models through a robustness check. The findings reveal that signals actively mitigate the problem of information asymmetry in both countries, but this varies in the sense that higher goal setting has a more positive/impactful relationship with project success in the UK than it does in China. Project comments are more positively associated with project success in China as compared to the UK, whereas project updates are more negatively related to project success in China as compared to the UK. These findings demonstrate the importance that signals have upon successful crowdfunding activities/campaigns, highlighting the theoretical and practical influence and relevance for potential fundraisers in the two aforementioned economies.