Understanding the Effects of Endorsements in Scientific Crowdfunding
Sanorita Dey, Karrie Karahalios, Wai-Tat Fu
CHI’17: ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Session: Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing
Abstract:
Understanding the factors that persuade backers to donate to research projects has become increasingly important with the rising popularity of scientific crowdfunding. Although there are many similarities between enterprise and scientific crowdfunding, some factors differentiate these two forms of crowdfunding. One such factor is the use of endorsements. The endorsement helps backers gain trust based on expert opinions about the competency of the researchers and the usefulness of the projects. We analyzed 810 endorsements from scientific campaigns posted on Experiment.com and derived a taxonomy of topics discussed in the endorsements. A regression analysis revealed that when endorsers explained the skills of the campaign owners, the probability of success of the campaign improved; on the contrary, when endorsers reiterated the goal of the project, the campaign was less likely to succeed. We conclude with design implications formulated from our findings to better support scientific crowdfunding.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025763
WEB: http://chi2017.acm.org/
