Reward-based crowdfunding as gift exchange. On the interconnection of consumption, commitment and community in crowdfunding
Final Report Abstract
The object of the research project is to explore the peculiar simultaneity of purchase and donation, consumption and engagement, which can be observed in reward-based crowdfunding. Crowdfunding generally refers to the financing of projects via Internet platforms by a large number of supporters (the "crowd"). In reward-based crowdfunding, these projects often involve the development of products that the initiators associate in one way or another with a value proposition - a good cause. And the desire to support the cause in question often plays just as much a role for the supporters as the interest in owning and using the product in question. The findings of this research project are based on 21 case studies of individual reward-based crowdfunding projects. For these case studies, we conducted interviews with the initiators of the respective projects and with selected supporters, and we analyzed the projects' websites on the crowdfunding platform as well as accompanying communications in social media. The key to understanding reward-based crowdfunding lies in a three-way connection of consumption, attachment to a cause of deeper meaning, and relatedness to a community of likeminded people. Our analysis shows that the different manifestations of relatedness find expression in different ways of connecting the normal, value-related, and symbolic use values of the products that crowdfunding projects are concerned with producing. The value references of crowdfunding projects are often the value references of particular communities of likeminded people. These are in some cases co-present or media communities, but more often imagined communities.
Publications
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Is paying yourself a taboo topic in rewardbased crowdfunding? TUTS Working Papers, 1/2023, 1-25.
Schulz-Schaeffer, I. & Kirschsieper, D.
