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Social motivation and credibility in crowdfunding

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Social motivation and credibility in crowdfunding

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SOCIAL MOTIVATION AND CREDIBILITY IN CROWDFUNDING

By
Young Ji Kim

________________________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)

December 2014

Copyright 2014 Young Ji Kim
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Dedication
To my family and Andrea Hollingshead.
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Acknowledgements
In brief, this dissertation is about motivation to do good, trust, and collective
intelligence. These topics not only reflect my academic interests but more precisely
reveal life lessons I have learned throughout my six years of PhD studies at the USC
Annenberg School. Many people have inspired me to learn what it means to genuinely
have others’ best interest at heart and to have a trustworthy community. This dissertation
is a small but significant fruit of my journey shaped and guided by a number of great
minds and souls I had the privilege of knowing.
My first and foremost acknowledgment goes to, without a moment of hesitation,
Andrea Hollingshead, who is my dissertation chair, academic advisor, and lifelong
mentor. She has been the strongest and firmest supporter for me through thick and thin,
and I could have not finished all the milestones in the PhD program without her. For my
future career and life, I will remember to ask, “what would Andrea do?” to myself and I
believe I will easily find solutions to hard situations. I also thank my dissertation
committee: Peggy McLaughlin, Lian Jian, and Peter Carnevale. I sincerely appreciate
their valuable feedback and unwavering commitment to guiding my dissertation. I thank
Peter Monge and Janet Fulk for teaching me academic rigor and being a good example of
leadership in large research teams.
Teaching was a big part of my PhD life at USC. I find myself extremely fortunate
working with Ken Sereno and Lian Jian in foundational courses, from which I learned
how to become a good teacher-scholar myself and help students learn and grow. I am also
grateful to my students from various sections and classes for collectively contributing to
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my learning as a teacher and to my sanity in the midst of various challenges as a PhD
student.
This dissertation was made possible by generous financial and administrative
support from the USC Annenberg School. I appreciate the doctoral program’s leadership
including Larry Gross, Tom Goodnight, Peter Monge, and Sarah Banet-Weiser; and
administration especially Anne Marie Campian and Imre Meszaros. Another big thank
you for contributing to this dissertation goes to Terrence Cho who designed my mock
website, and all my interview participants.
Dedicating a significant amount of my time to graduate studies including writing
this dissertation could have come at the expense of relationships, but fortunately it wasn’t
the case for me thanks to my wonderful friends and family. Amanda Beacom, Jingbo
Meng, Mina Park, and Minhee Son (alphabetical order ☺). It was my privilege to be
friends with you and receive tremendous support from you in an otherwise ruthless
environment. I did not consider the City of Angels my home until 2012 when I met this
wonderful spiritual community: Barbara Lee, Wendy Park, Joanne Pio, Sara Sun, and
Jess Lee. My community has expanded and strengthened over the last two years thanks to
Sarah Kang, Judy Yoo, Charles Kim, Ben Michaels, Susie Tae, Terrence Cho, Grace Lee,
Hestia Lim, David Cha, Scott Yun, Eric Noh, Andy Choi, Kassia Phoy, and Gerald
Chung. You have all taught me the importance of freedom and commitment in
relationships, the qualities that I did not think could co-exist. Thank you also to Kris Yi
for your extremely generous time and support. My lifetime besties Soohyun Choi, Jiyeon
Sohn, and Ilju Kim. Thank you for your patience and understanding no matter how far I
am from you and how long that absence has been. Finally, my family. I have no proper
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words to describe their contribution, so I will just dedicate this work to them. No matter
how much effort I put into this dissertation, it doesn’t define me but you do. And the real
last but prime point to mention to conclude my acknowledgments: the idea of this
dissertation has been constantly inspired and challenged by Hebrews 11:1.
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Table of Contents
Dedication ii
Acknowledgements iii
List of Tables ix
List of Figures x
Abstract xi
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 2: CREDIBILITY—PAST AND PRESENT 8
Trust and Credibility 8
Source Credibility, Defined 9
Source Credibility, Online 13
Source Credibility, Web 2.0 15
Lessons and Gaps 18
CHAPTER 3: UNDERSTANDING CROWDFUNDING 21
Online Peer-to-Peer Economy and Crowdfunding 21
Defining and Characterizing Crowdfunding 23
Study 1: Interviews with Crowdfunding Project Creators and Backers 25
Method 26
Sampling 26
Procedure 33
Coding 35
Results 36
Participant profiles 36
Cross-case findings 40
Discussion 55

CHAPTER 4: A MOTIVATIONAL APPROACH TO CREDIBILITY
EVALUATION IN CROWDFUNDING 58
Motivation in Credibility Evaluation 58
Social Motivation 60
Study 2: Social Motivation and Credibility in Crowdfunding 62
The Role of Social Motivation in Crowdfunding 62
Cues of Credibility in Crowdfunding 65
Method 71
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Research Design 71
Sampling and Recruitment 72
Stimulus 72
Site design 72
Stimulus materials 81
Manipulation 83
Social motivation 83
Video 84
Number of backers 84
Number of contribution by creator 85
Procedure 85
Task 1 87
Task 2 87
Task 3 89
Measures 89
Topic involvement 89
Information recall 89
Creator credibility 90
Contribution 90
Information credibility 91
Perceived website credibility 91
Perceived project quality 91
Attitude toward creator and project 91
Social value orientation 91
Crowdfunding experience 92
Familiarity with Makey Makey 92
Demographic variables 93
Results 93
Experiment 1 93
Manipulation check 93
Descriptive statistics 95
Hypothesis testing 95
Experiment 2 103
Manipulation check 103
Hypothesis testing 103
Experiment 3 104
Manipulation check 104
Hypothesis testing 106
Experiment 4 106
Manipulation check 107

CHAPTER 5: GENERAL DISCUSSION 109
Credibility Research: Old and New 110
Social Motivation, Credibility, and Crowdfunding 113
Limitations 117
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Conclusion 120

REFERENCES 122
APPENDICES 136
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List of Tables
Table 1: Categorization of Crowdfunding Projects 31
Table 2: Profiles of Interview Participants 38
Table 3: Comparison of Crowdfunding Services 77
Table 4: Descriptive Statistics and Correlations of Variables for H1 98
Table 5: Social Motivation and Topic Involvement on Contribution [Pre-Order] 98
Table 6: Descriptive Statistics and Correlations of Variables for H2 and H3 101
Table 7: The Effects of Social Motivation on Creator Credibility 102
Table 8: Prosocial Motivation and Video on Creator Credibility (N = 82) 105
Table 9: Summary of Hypotheses 108
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List of Figures
Figure 1: “Average” project page 78
Figure 2: Project page for the Small Society website (stimulus) 78
Figure 3: “Average” creator bio page 79
Figure 4: Creator bio page for the Small Society website (stimulus) 79
Figure 5: “Average” transaction page 80
Figure 6: Transaction page for the Small Society website (stimulus) 80
Figure 7: Screenshot of the Kickstarter campaign for Makey Makey 81
Figure 8: Prosocial (top) and proself (bottom) versions of the project page 86
Figure 9: Interaction of prosocial motivation and topic involvement on contribution 99
Figure 10: Interaction of prosocial motivation and topic involvement on amount of
contribution among those who contributed 99
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Abstract
People often accept the credibility of information online without knowing much
about the contributors. A growing research on online credibility has shown that a wide
variety of cues associated with a given source, such as the source’s past activities and
feedback from other users, are afforded by digital technologies and can be used for
inferring the source’s credibility. This dissertation goes beyond the current literature on
credibility and trust by adding social motivation (i.e., prosocial vs proself) as an
important factor that biases the choice of source cues and affects credibility evaluation.
To address these issues, I focus on crowdfunding, a growing platform of online peer-to-
peer economy where trust is of vital importance for two parties—creator and funder—and
prosocial and proself motivations co-exist. In-depth interviews and experiments were
conducted to examine the role of social motivation in shaping information processing for
credibility evaluation and contribution behavior in crowdfunding. Results confirm the
importance of social motivation in credibility evaluation and contribution in
crowdfunding, but challenge our previous understanding of how digital cues of credibility
are processed.
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Keywords: credibility, social motivation, crowdfunding, online p2p economy, prosocial
behavior, digital cues

1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Since anyone can write anything online, it is inherently risky to believe online
information. Yet, many people take that risk. People believe what strangers say about
local restaurants to choose a place to take a friend; they buy used computers from
someone they do not know directly; and they donate money to someone’s fundraising
project that promises to produce an indie film or a technological innovation. Though
seemingly unreasonable, trusting other people online has increasingly become an
informed decision as the current media environment affords an enormous amount of
information about users, potentially reducing the risk due to uncertainty. Then, how do
individuals process information about other users online in order to decide to invest their
resources or not? The present dissertation examines this question in the context of
crowdfunding, a platform that allows individual entrepreneurs and artists to request
funding for their ideas from a large collective of individuals (Mollick, 2014). As potential
factors that explain contribution behaviors in crowdfunding, I use two concepts:
credibility and social motivation.
Attention to credibility has revived as information and communication technology
enables lay individuals to easily become producers and distributors of information,
products, and services, without necessarily being governed by professional gatekeepers
such as journalists, editors, and other entities that verify information veracity. Trust in
these individuals as information sources is important for users to engage in further
behaviors such as news consumption, social interaction, and financial decisions.
Individuals in the current media environment leverage technologies for deciding whose
information to trust using a wide variety of digital cues associated with information
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sources (Metzger, Flanagin, & Medders, 2010; Sundar, Knobloch-Westerwick, & Hastall,
2007). A cue, which is any feature in digital media that may trigger a heuristic or action
(Donath, 2007b; Sundar, 2008), can guide users to make judgments about a given source,
by which they can buffer the risks involved in relying on the source. For example, in
online shopping, consumers may attend to information about a seller, such as the seller’s
past sales and cumulative feedback about the seller, to judge the reliability of the
transaction (Resnick & Zeckhauser, 2002). On Twitter, an account holder’s number of
followers may serve as a cue of social proof of the source’s reliability (Cha, Haddadi,
Benevenuto, & Gummadi, 2010; Westerman, Spence, & van der Heide, 2012).
These source cues available on web interfaces do not always capture a user’s
attention in order to be considered for credibility evaluation, nor do they elicit the same
kind of heuristics for every user. Recent research found no effects of certain cues that
were theoretically derived such as recency of information updates (e.g., Sundar et al.,
2007; Westerman, Spence, & van der Heide, 2014). In the context of consumer ratings,
while some cues such as valence of ratings (i.e., positive or negative ratings) generally
affect perceptions of the product, other cues such as the volume of ratings do not lead
consumers to think and behave in consistent patterns (Flanagin, Metzger, Pure, &
Markov, 2011; Godes & Mayzlin, 2004; Moe & Trusov, 2011). Several leading scholars
in the fields of communication and information sciences have thus called for more
attention to the role of motivational and contextual factors in shaping the ways in which
one perceives a source credible in online contexts (Fogg, 2003; Hilligoss & Rieh, 2008;
Metzger, 2007). For example, how cues are noticed and interpreted by individual users
may depend on their given information-searching context; a student searching for
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information for a course may determine source credibility heavily influenced by the
instructor’s perspective (Hilligoss & Rieh, 2008). Nevertheless, no empirical attempt has
been made so far to incorporate these factors to understand credibility evaluation.
To address such a gap in the current literature on credibility, this dissertation
proposes to consider social motivation (de Dreu & Carnevale, 2003) as a force that
shapes individuals’ information processing, particularly credibility evaluation, and
behavioral outcomes. Social motivation is “the desire to attain certain distributions of
outcomes between oneself and the other party” (de Dreu & Carnevale, 2003, p. 236).
Social motivation varies such that some people are more inclined to take other’s interest
into consideration in addition to or more than their own (prosocial motivation) in
distributing resources, while others tend to be more self-concerned, trying to maximize
their own gains (proself motivation) (de Dreu, Beersma, Stroebe, & Euwema, 2006).
Social motivation is relevant to the situation where two or more parties are
interdependent of each other with regard to outcome distribution (de Dreu & Carnevale,
2003). Research in negotiation contexts has found that social motivation not only affects
negotiation outcomes but also shapes how negotiators process information such that those
with prosocial motivation focus more on information that aligns with their goals such as
cooperative strategies, whereas proself individuals attend more to competitive
information (de Dreu et al., 2006).
The concept of social motivation, previously examined in interpersonal,
organizational, conflict, and negotiation contexts, can also apply to an online setting,
particularly where individuals come together and engage in direct business with other
individuals, a phenomenon also known as peer-to-peer (p2p) economy. Popular examples
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of p2p economy include those that support dealing in goods (e.g., eBay, Amazon
Marketplace, Etsy), work and service (e.g., Craigslist, Mechanical Turk), lodging (e.g.,
airbnb, CouchSurfing), loans (e.g,, Lending Club, Kiva), and funding (e.g., Kickstarter,
Indiegogo). One important characteristic of p2p economies that set them apart from other
corporate-led e-commerce is that there is a great amount of information available about
users—buyers and independent entrepreneurs—which in turn promotes a sense of social
presence and social interaction (Wang, Hori, & Sakurai, 2008). This is contrasted by past
perceptions of online transactions where “information asymmetry remains the main
obstacle to building trust between seller and buyer” (Antony, Lin, & Xu, 2006, p. 1889).
Due to easier access to rich information and interactions, it is likely that transactional
behavior in p2p economies will bear some resemblance to people judgment and strategic
choices in social interactions, that is, not purely economic interactions. For instance, in
airbnb, a hospitality exchange network, price and quality of accommodation is not the
only factor that matters in users’ booking decisions; instead, hosts and guests make
choices about each other based on their interest and personality fit after reviewing each
other’s profiles, reading reviews from prior hosts and guests, and communicating with
each other directly (Ikkala, 2014).
Of various p2p economies where consumers’ economic and social motives
overlap, crowdfunding particularly presents researchers with a unique opportunity to
examine how various motivations may affect information processing and behavior. The
concept of crowdfunding finds its roots in both crowdsourcing, which is more business-
oriented, and microfinancing, driven by the motives of charity and social cooperation
(Ordanini, Miceli, Pizzetti, & Parasuraman, 2011). Consumers in crowdfunding “pay for
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producing and promoting a product (instead of buying it) and bear the risk associated
with that decision” (Ordanini et al., 2011, p. 444). This does not mean that they act like
charity donors, however. A recent interview study found that motivations of
crowdfunding backers vary from seeking tangible rewards to supporting creators and
creative communities (Gerber, Hui, & Kuo, 2012). Research also suggests that for-profit
and not-for-profit sectors are not completely governed by one motivation or the other
exclusively, as shown in cases where consumers choose businesses based on their
corporate social responsibility (Mohr, Webb, & Harris, 2005) or sellers based on their
charitable giving (Elfenbein, Fisman, & McManus, 2012), while prosocial actors are
concerned with strategic reputation building (Engelmann & Fischbacher, 2009). Despite
its interesting position, our knowledge of how users of crowdfunding make funding
decisions through what cognitive process is limited due to the lack of scholarly work
(Mollick, 2014).
In answering the call for consideration of motivation in credibility research, and
making crowdfunding an appropriate context for such an endeavor, two methodological
approaches were considered. First, to understand the crowdfunding phenomenon in depth
and to contextualize the theoretical dimensions of credibility and social motivation, I
conducted 13 in-depth interviews with crowdfunding project creators and backers. Then,
a series of experiments informed by interview findings along with previous literature
were conducted to examine how social motivation affects information processing,
credibility evaluation, and contribution behavior in crowdfunding.
By considering social motivation in credibility evaluation to explain contribution
behavior in crowdfunding, this dissertation makes both theoretical and practical
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contributions. First, it is an attempt to directly answer the call for consideration of context
and motivation in credibility research. Incorporating social motivation into the study of
credibility evaluation can illuminate how credibility evaluation occurs when source and
receiver are engaged in information-rich social interactions with the goal of allocating
financial resources. Second, by choosing crowdfunding as the study context, this study
can offer insight into crowdfunding users’ information processing and funding decisions,
both of which are little known to date. Findings will enhance our understanding of the
mechanism of crowdfunding from backers’ perspectives, which is an important concern
for project creators and fundraisers for successful funding.
In this dissertation, I use the term ‘source’ quite broadly. I define source as
anyone who authors and/or distributes information. In New York Times, for example, an
article is authored by a writer, who is the source of the article, but distributed and made
available by the Times, who is perceived as the source of this news as well. In e-
commerce, an individual seller is a type of source who provides a product and
information related to the product. In crowdfunding, a project creator can be considered a
source as the one who creates and disseminates original content to persuade an audience
to support the creator’s idea in monetary forms.
The rest of the dissertation is organized as follows. Chapter 2 reviews literature on
source credibility with a particular focus on the technological implications for source
credibility conception and research. Then, lessons and gaps found in the review are
discussed. Chapter 3 describes crowdfunding, the study context, to set the stage for the
current study, and reports Study 1, in-depth interviews with 13 crowdfunding users.
Building on the previous discussion and research findings, Chapter 4 proposes the
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motivational approach to the study of credibility evaluation with research hypotheses,
which are tested in a series of experiments using a mock crowdfunding website. Chapter
5 presents general discussion of the dissertation, along with theoretical and practical
implications and limitations.
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CHAPTER 2: Credibility—Past and Present
In this chapter, I review research on credibility in three different areas. First,
research that established the conceptual underpinnings of credibility is discussed. Second,
I examine how the concept of credibility was applied to the early era of the internet,
especially with the focus on web site credibility. Finally, credibility research conducted in
the Web 2.0 environment will be reviewed with the discussion of its implications for the
current study.
Trust and Credibility
Before discussing credibility in depth, it is important to distinguish credibility
from trust, which is often used interchangeably with credibility or used without clear
definitions. Trust and credibility are related but distinct concepts. Trust is “simply a bet”
which is inherently risky (DeSteno, 2014, Chapter 1, para. 2). Nevertheless, humans take
the risk by relying on others because “the potential benefits from trusting others
considerably outweigh the potential losses on average” (DeSteno, 2014, Chapter 1, para.
3).
Conceptualizing trust has never been considered an easy task (McKnight,
Choudhury, & Kacmar, 2002). Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995), one of the most
heavily cited works on trust, distinguish trustworthiness, propensity to trust, and trust.
They define trust as, “willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another
party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to
the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party” (Mayer et al.,
1995, p. 712); in short, it is trustor’s “willingness to take risk” (Mayer et al., 1995, p.
712). Trust depends on the trustor’s traits related to trust, called “propensity to trust,”
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and the trustee’s characteristics, called “trustworthiness” (Mayer et al., 1995). Mayer et
al. (1995) propose three factors affecting trustworthiness—ability, benevolence, and
integrity, and argue that if all factors are high, the trustee will be perceived trustworthy. A
meta analysis of trust literature based on the organizational context highlights the
importance of trustworthiness as its effects was only partially mediated by trust and
further explained behavioral outcomes and affective commitment controlling for trust
(Colquitt, Scott, & LePine, 2007).
The concept of trustworthiness in Mayer et al. (1995)’s theoretical model of trust
fits source credibility, which originated from persuasion research (Hovland, Janis, &
Kelley, 1953). The three dimensions of trustworthiness—ability, benevolence, and
integrity, are akin to the three dimensions of source credibility—expertise, goodwill, and
trustworthiness. This study adopts the concept of source credibility (a) to situate this
research in the stream of literature on mediated communication, and (b) to harness the
rich knowledge of source credibility as we apply it to a new context.
Source Credibility, Defined
In the simplest term, credibility is defined as “believability” (Tseng & Fogg,
1999). Although credibility can be associated with different components of a
communication process such as source, message, channel, and receiver, the present study
particularly focuses on source credibility for two reasons. First, source characteristics
have been considered to affect the persuasiveness of a message and thus extensively
investigated in past communication research (Wilson & Sherrell, 1993). In addition, as
recent technological advancements allow anyone to become a source online and to
contribute evaluations of other sources, determining source credibility has increasingly
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become a daunting and complicated task for individual users (Flanagin & Metzger,
2008). It is not only information that has increased in magnitude but also information
about the information sources that has become increasingly accessible. Thus, given the
great amount of past research on source credibility and the potential that it is substantially
shaped by changes in the technological infrastructure of the internet, the boundary of this
study is set around source credibility.
Conception of source credibility goes as far as to the Greek philosopher Aristotle
who classified the modes of persuasion into three—ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos, in
particular, refers to the appeal to the communicator of a persuasive message, which is
akin to what we call source credibility now. Hovland et al. (1953) were among the first
scholars who conceptualized source credibility as it is now and empirically tested its
effect. They conceptualized source credibility to consist of two components: expertness
and trustworthiness. The bi-dimensionality of credibility suggests that a message is
persuasive when the source is capable of presenting valid information (expertness) and is
not motivated to provide nonvalid information (trustworthiness). In lab experiments, they
found that a message presented from a “high-credibility source” (e.g., professor,
academic journal, and the like) was more persuasive than the identical message presented
from a “low-credibility source” (e.g., student, magazine, and the like). This source
credibility effect, however, was found short-lived, referred to as the sleeper effect. That
is, over time, messages by a high-credibility source became less influential and more
interestingly, those by a low-credibility source became less doubtful and were even
accepted by receivers (Hovland & Weiss, 1951).
Although the bi-dimensional conceptualization had been influential in subsequent
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research, other terms have also been used in place of, or in addition to, trustworthiness
and expertness. Related concepts and terms for trustworthiness include goodness,
honesty, truthfulness, morality, reputation, and reliability, whereas expertness has been
substituted for or related to quality, accuracy, authority, and competence (Flanagin &
Metzger, 2008).
As another important construct of credibility, McCroskey and Teven (1999)
suggested goodwill, indicating “perceived caring” (p. 91) by the source or “intent-
toward-receiver” (p. 92). It was argued that the goodwill of a source can be judged from
the person’s understanding, empathy, and responsiveness (McCroskey & Teven, 1999).
Understanding refers to sensitivity of the source to audience’s concerns, thus increasing
connection between the source and audience. Empathetic sources identify with others’
feelings, while accepting them as valid. Responsiveness indicates how the source reacts
to another quickly and attentively.
This third factor of goodwill had in fact been discussed by Hovland et al. (1953)
though it was not specifically named back then. They discussed Merton’s (1946) research
on Kate Smith’s war bond selling campaign in 1943. In Merton’s analysis, the audience
was persuaded by her high degree of “sincerity,” as in the audience’s quote “… she really
means anything she ever says” (Merton, 1946, as cited in Hovland et al., 1953, p. 23).
The audience perceived her to be caring of the national welfare, not herself, even though
there was a clear intent of persuasion in the campaign, which in most cases may not
reflect well on the source.
McCroskey and Teven (1999) called goodwill the “lost dimension” of credibility
for its lack of presence in credibility research. The omission of goodwill in the literature
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prior to their study had to do with adopting a factor-analytic approach in establishing the
dimensionality of the credibility construct. The three dimensional model was not
empirically supported because the goodwill factor was absorbed into the other two
factors. However, they were inspired to rethink goodwill as a factor that could have a
strong relevance, independently from other dimensions, to teacher-student interactions in
which students are more likely to listen to teachers who have students’ best interests at
heart. When teachers (i.e., source) show devotion and positive intent toward their
students (i.e., audience or receiver), students are more likely to engage in attentive
listening and effortful learning. Thus, they saw goodwill as a “means of opening
communication channels more widely” (McCroskey & Teven, 1999, p. 92). They found
that goodwill indeed uniquely contributed to source believability and likableness in
various contexts from political figures to interpersonal contacts.
While consideration of the bi-dimensional model of credibility (i.e.,
trustworthiness and expertise only) has been dominant in previous credibility research,
this study adopts the three-dimensional approach to credibility for the following reasons.
Judgment of a source’s goodwill is facilitated by in-depth observation of and direct
interaction with the source as in the case of teacher-student interactions. Unlike the
traditional media context where there is little chance to directly observe and interact with
the source, the current media environment, characterized as the social web, presents a
wide variety of opportunities to learn about and directly interact with peers through their
user profiles, content, and networking features (e.g., friending, following) (Ellison &
boyd, 2013). Thus, users may easily access a great repository of information about
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sources and connect with them, if willing, which may allow them to judge the sources’
intentions and motives besides their character and expertise.
In addition, goodwill of a source is an important criterion in consumer decision
making. Research has found that consumers demand morality from firms, or corporate
social responsibility, and take it into consideration in their purchase decisions (Mohr et
al., 2005). In the current study that examines users’ information processing and behavior
in a peer-to-peer economy, especially crowdfunding, it is likely that potential backers will
be concerned with the fundraiser or project creator’s motive to raise money in terms of
being more egocentric or prosocial, which may be translated as perceived goodwill.
Source Credibility, Online
The context in which source credibility matters extends to the mediated
environment, particularly the internet, which has increasingly become an important
infrastructure for individuals to acquire information. During the early days of the internet,
scholarly attention was largely paid to whether and how a web site is perceived as a
credible source. In general, definitions and constructs of credibility discussed above were
considered applicable to the web context (Fogg et al., 2001; Rieh & Belkin, 1998). One
additional aspect that is particularly relevant to the web is the connection between a web
site and its real world presence as a cue of credibility. For example, Fogg et al. (2001)
conducted a large quantitative study on factors that make web sites credible. In this study,
they created a pool of several hundred items related to web site credibility and generated
seven factors from survey responses, namely—real-world feel, ease of use, expertise,
trustworthiness, tailoring, commercial implications, and amateurism. The “real-world
feel” factor increased web site credibility the most, followed by ease of use, expertise,
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trustworthiness, and tailoring. The aspect of real-world feel is concerned with the site’s
connection to its offline identity, such as giving physical address, phone number, and
email address, and responding to requests quickly.
Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect in web site credibility, compared to the face-
to-face context, is that technical qualities of web sites play an important role in users’
credibility assessment. For example, it was found that domain names and suffixes (e.g.,
.edu, .gov) and seals of approval (e.g., VeriSign, Trust e) cued expertise and
trustworthiness of the site (Wogalter & Mayhorn, 2008). Research also found that
technical features of web sites, such as appearance, usability/interface design, and
organization of information influenced users’ credibility assessment (Flanagin &
Metzger, 2007). These features received users’ first and foremost attention (Flanagin &
Metzger, 2007; Fogg, 2003). Websites were also evaluated for their credibility,
attractiveness and likability based on their design and looks (Fogg et al., 2001; Sillence,
Briggs, Harris, & Fishwick, 2007). Besides the source aspect, the quality of message
presentation was also evaluated on how well the web site is designed and organized
(Iding, Crosby, Auernheimer, & Klemm, 2009).
Interestingly, those who claim that they verify the original source of given
information more were found to verify less (Flanagin & Metzger, 2007). In addition, an
observational study revealed that a good number of people were unable to recall original
sources of information after completing a search task due to the lack of attention to the
sources (Eysenbach & Kohler, 2002). However, these findings should not be taken as the
evidence that people do not verify credibility of actual sources at all. Boundary
conditions exist such as site genre (e.g., news, e-commerce, or personal) (Flanagin &
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Metzger, 2007) and user attributes such as “motivation in the credibility-assessment
process” (Metzger, 2007, p. 2087), following the dual-process theories such as
Elaboration Likelihood Model and Heuristic-Systematic Model. A web site’s technical
features are considered heuristic or peripheral cues, and are low-effort means for
evaluating the site credibility. When users’ motivation to process information increases,
however, their effort to critically evaluate source credibility above and beyond the site
features is expected to increase (Metzger, 2007).
In summary, the notion of source credibility holds relevance to evaluating
information on a web site as its underlying dimensions still guide users’ credibility
assessment. However, research also shows that technical features of the site largely
dictate one’s overall credibility assessment, although boundary conditions exist.
Source Credibility, Web 2.0
Since around the mid-2000s, the web started to transform into one that encourages
individual users’ contribution, the so-called web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005). This change in the
platform and applications of the web significantly lowered the barrier for end-users to
create content individually and collectively without professional skills and training. As
information from a great number and variety of users has now become available,
assessing source credibility online is more complicated than ever (Flanagin & Metzger,
2008). It is because web sites are no longer solely responsible for the content published
on their sites; instead, an individual content contributor is more or less the “source” of
information. A mere focus on credibility associated with the web site can give only a
partial picture of online source credibility.
The increasing number of individuals who now serve as information sources had
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stirred public concerns because it was considered that “there [was] no quality control
mechanism” (Rieh, 2002, p. 145) online, such as author credentials and reputation,
thereby making credibility assessment a great challenge on the information seeker’s part.
On the other hand, it has been noted that the new media environment presents
opportunities rather than threats as the collective of individuals not only produce content
but also evaluate content together (Metzger et al., 2010), creating a kind of collective
intelligence system for credibility assessment. In addition, users’ activities and
interactions are captured and made visible at the system level, becoming “digital trace
data” (Ackland, 2013, p. xiv) such as friends’ lists, past activities, and other site-related
behaviors, all of which have the potential to cue the users’ attributes related to credibility.
This nature of Web 2.0 being participatory and networked is particularly
pronounced in Ellison and boyd (2013)’s updated definition of social network sites. They
define a social network site as “a networked communication platform in which
participants 1) have uniquely identifiable profiles that consist of user-supplied content,
content provided by other users, and/or system-level data; 2) can publicly articulate
connections that can be viewed and traversed by others; and 3) can consume, produce,
and/or interact with streams of user-generated content provided by their connections on
the site” (p. 158). This definition of social network sites, which can apply well to other
sites employing networking features, highlights that individuals’ online image or
impression, including credibility, is shaped by their own content, other’s input, and data
provided by the system. These factors shaping online impression and credibility are also
referred to as self-generated, other-generated, and system-generated cues (Tong, van der
Heide, Langwell, & Walther, 2008; Walther, van der Heide, Hamel, & Shulman, 2009).
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As cues are generated by multiple players in the current media environment, the
number and variety of cues that indicate source credibility has accelerated. One of the
formalized systems that provides a wide range of explicit cues of source credibility is the
reputation system, which is an information system in a web site or community that
“collects, distributes, and aggregates feedback about participants’ past behavior”
(Resnick, Kuwabara, Zeckhauser, & Friedman, 2000, p. 46). An early, and most well-
known example is eBay’s feedback forum and seller ratings where users leave feedback
and rate each other after transactions are completed. The content of feedback and
ratings—types of other-generated cues—are publicly available for others to see, and are
used to compute the user’s reputation score in the percentage of positive feedback, a type
of system-generated cue.
Such cues indeed affect credibility evaluation, as shown in previous research.
Metzger et al. (2010), through their focus group study, provide evidence that people
heavily use “social information,” including reputation systems, in their information
seeking and credibility assessment. The participants in their study mentioned feedback
and reviews as useful means of credibility evaluations. In the context of online shopping,
Sundar, Oeldorf-Hirsch, and Xu (2008) found that ratings and sales rank increased
perceived credibility of the target product. The volume of social cues is also important in
credibility perception. Specifically, Flanagin and Metzger (2013) found that the volume
of online movie ratings led the participants to trust and favor the reviewers’ opinions.
Yet, the size effect is not simple, as shown in Westerman et al. (2012)’ s study on
Twitter, which found a curvilinear relationship between the number of followers and
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source trustworthiness such that having too many or too few followers made the source
less trustworthy.
Lessons and Gaps
The early literature on source credibility has taught us what underlying
dimensions individuals consider when evaluating the believability of a source. Those
factors such as trustworthiness, expertise, and goodwill are still applicable as long as one
is motivated to evaluate the credibility of something, whether a website or individual
source. The concept of credibility itself has hardly changed.
Research on online source credibility, however, points to an important shift in
credibility assessment—not credibility itself—as it is shaped by technological changes in
the media environment. In face-to-face interpersonal situations, one would listen to
another’s persuasive speech and infer about the credibility of the source using a limited
amount of observable cues. Web site credibility as well was studied with the assumption
that people do not know much about the source and therefore infer credibility from the
website where information is published, especially focusing on how those websites look.
By contrast, individual information seekers are now given an ample supply of cues about
information sources, from their demographic information, to their history of past
activities, to feedback from others.
While the current literature has identified the wide array of cues that trigger
source credibility assessment, it is less known whether these cues are treated with equal
importance and in identical ways across individuals. This gap was noted by Fogg (2003)
when he proposed prominence-interpretation theory. This theory posits that when
assessing credibility, the user must first notice a cue (prominence) and then make
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judgment about it (interpretation). Prominence refers to the likelihood that a cue is
recognized or perceived, and interpretation is a receiver’s judgment about the meaning of
the cue.
There are several factors that affect prominence and interpretation such as
involvement, topic, task, experience, and individual differences (Fogg, 2003). Of these,
involvement of the user, or motivation, is the most dominant factor, as more motivated
users are likely to notice more cues to process more information necessary for completing
their task (Fogg, 2003). Interpretation is also subjective to factors such as a user’s
assumptions, skills, knowledge, and context (Fogg, 2003). For instance, a few thousand
followers on Twitter may contribute to the account owner’s trustworthiness whereas the
same number of friends on Facebook may be perceived as “friend whoring”, causing
negative judgments about the person (Tong et al., 2008; Westerman et al., 2012).
Prominence-interpretation theory highlights the importance of individual differences in
credibility evaluation, such as involvement or motivation and contextual factors that
shape norms and expectations.
Other researchers have also called for consideration of contextual and
motivational factors in credibility research. The idea that context is important in
credibility evaluation is in fact decades old; as Hovland et al. (1953) noted, “the nature of
the problem situation which exists at the time of receiving a communication will affect a
person’s responsiveness to specific kinds of communicators” (p. 47). More recently,
based on their interviews with college students, Hilligoss and Rieh (2008) argued that
contextual factors “intervene and influence credibility judgments by constraining
selection of resources for a particular information seeking activity” (p. 1479).
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Specifically, some of their interview participants accommodated to their professor’s
credibility judgment criteria rather than their own because doing so serves their goal
better within that context. Their research shows that credibility and the criteria for
judging it are not necessarily fixed or absolute but rather fluid and adaptable given the
individual’s goal at the moment.
In addition, Metzger (2007) stressed motivation as “the most pressing item on the
agenda for online credibility research” (p. 2087). She continued, “surprisingly … user
motivation is missing from most existing models of credibility assessment” and this
observation is corroborated by the above review of the current study. Motivation was
considered an important variable to fill the gap between research and actual user
behavior. That is, research based on lab and surveys is biased toward careful examination
of information whereas in reality, individuals may not find time and energy to engage in
effortful information processing (Metzger, 2007).
In summary, prior research has proven the applicability and validity of source
credibility to online contexts although individuals use different cues in different ways
depending on the structural nature of the web and contextual and motivational factors.
However, the latter boundary conditions are yet to be examined.

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CHAPTER 3: Understanding Crowdfunding
This chapter aims to make a case for why crowdfunding is an appropriate context
for the current study, which aims to understand how credibility and social motivation
affect contribution in crowdfunding. To do so, first, current literature on crowdfunding is
selectively reviewed to understand the phenomenon. Second, findings from in-depth
interviews with crowdfunding users (i.e., project creators and backers) are presented. The
interviews were conducted particularly to confirm the plurality of backers’ motivations
that vary along social motivation, and to identify the theoretical dimensions of credibility
specific to the crowdfunding context.
Online Peer-to-Peer Economy and Crowdfunding
The primary context of this study is the peer-to-peer (p2p) economy where
individual consumers and independent entrepreneurs come together and deal with each
other directly. Among various kinds of p2p economies that exist, this study focuses on
crowdfunding. I will first describe p2p economy in general and present crowdfunding as
a special type of p2p economy, demonstrating how it may serve as a context that pushes
boundaries set by previous theories and research.
A very early example of a p2p economy includes napster.com, a p2p file sharing
network. This form of exchange system came as an alternative to the traditional business-
to-consumer (B2C) system, by allowing individual consumers to be both a producer or
supplier and a consumer. According to Akçura and Altınkemer (2002), the p2p economy
has several advantages: (a) efficiency due to no central exchange, (b) low start-up and
maintenance costs, (c) no bounds on the membership and the network capacity, and (d)
ease of expansion and set up (p. 244-245). On the other hand, a major disadvantage of
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p2p economies is that consumers must bear full liability for their payment despite that
there is no guarantee of obtaining what was advertised. According to annual internet
crime reports released by the U.S. Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a multi-agency
task force serving as a hub of cyber crime reports and referrals, auction fraud and non-
delivery have consistently made the top crime list since the center’s first report in 2001.
Given its risk, trust is crucial for one to decide to make transactions in p2p economies.
There are many kinds of p2p economies that have been rising in the past decade.
They are often specialized in specific areas such as commerce (e.g., eBay, etsy), work
and service (e.g., Mechanical Turk, craigslist), transportation (e.g., uber, BlaBlaCar),
travel (e.g., airbnb), and crowdfunding and microlending (e.g., Kickstarter, Indiegogo,
Kiva, Lending Club) (The Peer-To-Peer Marketplace, 2014, March 26). Of these, this
study focuses on crowdfunding.
Besides that p2p economy in general requires trust, which is heavily affected by
source credibility, there are two reasons for giving the primary attention to crowdfunding.
First, crowdfunding recently has attracted considerable attention by the public, becoming
a mainstream example of social innovation. In 2012, Kickstarter celebrated its first
million-dollar project, succeeded by 16 more projects that achieved the million dollar
level success by the end of the year. In the same year, President Obama passed the
Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) that aims to boost startups and small
businesses by easing securities regulations including allowing crowdfunders to receive
company equity in return for their funding. Though popular crowdfunding sites like
Kickstarter and Indiegogo are not based on equity crowdfunding, the changes in
regulations suggest increased interest and stakes in crowdfunding. In addition, and most
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importantly, crowdfunding affords many motivations, as recent studies found that various
motives such as economic and altruistic goals co-exist in crowdfunding (Gerber et al.,
2012; Ordanini et al., 2011). The diversity of motivational goals within the platform calls
for a closer investigation into the nature of such motivations and how they may influence
backers’ cognitive and behavioral dynamics, which in turn affect the success of funding
and satisfaction of backers. Findings from research in the crowdfunding context can also
contribute to the theoretical development of credibility, with the addition of social
motivation as a key boundary condition.
Defining and Characterizing Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is a method of fundraising that allows “individual founders of for-
profit, cultural, or social projects to request funding from many individuals” (Mollick,
2014, p. 1). Crowdfunding can be looked at and studied from many different
perspectives. For example, some follow entrepreneurship literature and see crowdfunding
as a way for small, entrepreneurial ventures to finance projects from external sources,
especially the crowd, instead of specialized investors (Belleflamme, Lambert, &
Schwienbacher, 2014; Mollick, 2014; Schwienbacher & Larralde, 2012). Crowdfunding
is considered a useful financing strategy for venture firms that have difficulty recruiting
investors (Belleflamme et al., 2014). Crowdfunding is also seen as an alternative method
of fundraising for a variety of creative and social projects such as film making, music
production, community development, and social causes.
The idea of crowdfunding is inspired by previous concepts like microfinancing
and crowdsourcing (Ordanini et al., 2011). Scholarship in business tends to conceptualize
crowdfunding based on crowdsourcing, which involves “using the ‘crowd’ to obtain
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ideas, feedback, and solutions to develop corporate activities” (Belleflamme et al., 2014,
p. 588). Crowdfunding, however, solicits monetary contribution instead of an idea or
time, in exchange for some tangible or intangible rewards. Some crowdfunding initiatives
share profit with funders, called equity crowdfunding. Despites the influence of
crowdsourcing, crowdfunding is argued to “represent its own unique category of
fundraising, facilitated by a growing number of internet sites devoted to the topic”
(Mollick, 2014, p. 2).
What kinds of people participate in crowdfunding? Ordanini et al. (2011) argue
that while participants in open sourcing and crowdsourcing are motivated by learning,
self-promotion, and social benefits, crowdfunding participants “play promotional and
investment roles in support of the initiatives being crowdfunded” (Ordanini et al., 2011,
p. 447). Belleflamme et al. (2014) identify pre-ordering as one of the most dominant
forms of crowdfunding along with profit sharing. In pre-ordering crowdfunding,
consumers are allowed to pre-order the product, thereby helping entrepreneurs finance
the initial stage of production. Yet, the benefits they expect are not necessarily economic
profits; instead, the benefits that crowdfunders enjoy are “community benefits”
(Belleflamme et al., 2014, p. 589). In addition, Belleflamme et al. (2014) found that
crowdfunders are willing to pay a higher amount of money than regular consumers
despite a longer wait time, and like to feel that “they are part of a community of ‘special’
or ‘privileged’ consumers/investors” (p. 589).
Several studies identified keys to successful crowdfunding by analyzing data
from popular crowdfunding sites. Mollick (2014) succinctly summarizes them as project
and people, that is, quality of project and size of the creator’s network. Having videos and
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not having ambitious funding goals have been found to contribute to successful funding
(K. Chen, Jones, Kim, & Schlamp, 2013; Kuppuswamy & Bayus, 2013; Mollick, 2014).
Other factors include the number of projects launched by creators (K. Chen et al.;
Kuppuswamy & Bayus, 2013), number of projects backed by creators (K. Chen et al.),
whether it was featured on the front page (Mollick, 2014) and non-profit organization
(Schwienbacher & Larralde, 2012).
Research also suggests that the dynamics of crowdfunding is bounded by
geographic and social factors such as friends and family (F&F) (Agrawal, Catalini, &
Goldfarb, 2011; Mollick, 2014). Specifically, projects were unevenly distributed across
geographic regions based on regional specialty (e.g., film in Los Angeles, technology in
San Francisco), and being in an area rich in creative population increased the chance of
success. In addition, funding at an early time is driven by F&F who know the creators
personally.
Study 1: Interviews with Crowdfunding Project Creators and Backers
The objectives of Study 1 were (a) to identify types of backer motivations for
contributing to crowdfunding projects, and (b) to understand how the theoretical
dimensions of credibility are manifested in the context of crowdfunding so as to apply the
contextualized knowledge to refine the design of the follow-up experiments. Thus, three
general research questions were considered in Study 1 as follows:

RQ1: What are backers’ motivations for contributing to crowdfunding projects?
To what degree do they suggest prosocial motives?
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RQ2: How are the dimensions of credibility applied and manifested in project
creators’ communication strategies as they prepare, launch, and share their
projects?
RQ3: How are the dimensions of credibility applied and manifested in backers’
searching and decision making for crowdfunding projects?

To address the above questions, semi-structured in-depth interviews were
conducted with 13 users (i.e., project creators and backers) of popular crowdfunding sites
in the U.S. (e.g., Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Kiva). In-depth interviews are appropriate for
learning and gaining insight into a relatively new phenomenon. Semistructured
interviews are more flexible than structured interviews by using interview guides that
include a pre-determined list of themes and topics to be covered rather than a fine-grained
script. This flexibility allows interview participants to share their experience in their own
pace and flow of thoughts. In semi-structured interviews, the interviewer is not required
to follow the exact wording of questions but has freedom to ask about additional themes,
topics, and issues that emerge during the interview process (Fowler, 2004; Mason, 2004).
Method
Sampling. Robinson (2014) provides a theoretical and practical guide for
sampling in interviews, which consists of four points: (a) defining a sample universe by
setting selection criteria, (b) deciding on a sample size, (c) devising a sampling strategy,
and (d) sourcing sample (i.e., recruiting participants). I followed these guidelines to
conduct sampling for the current study.
Selection criteria. First, in defining a sample universe or study population,
researchers are to identify “a totality of persons from which cases may legitimately be
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sampled in an interview study” (p. 25) and determine inclusion and exclusion criteria,
thereby specifying the boundary of the study sample. The sample universe in this study
was the totality of people who have launched or backed a crowdfunding project, from
which people who meet certain criteria were considered. I limited my sample to adults (in
fact, users must be 18 years old or older to create an account on crowdfunding sites) who
have used U.S. based-crowdfunding services with the experience of launching or backing
projects in English, so as to reduce heterogeneity induced by nationality and language.
In addition, I restricted the sample to include recent and current users only. For
backers, I included users who have an active account and have contributed to their last
project within the past month. For creators, they must have launched their last project
within the last two years. This two-year period of time is long enough for them to have
completed the project and to have had some post-funding reflection, yet not too long ago,
which would have made it harder to recall their experience.
Sample size. The aim of this interview is not to maximize generalizability of study
findings, but to maximize the richness of information on the cognitive and behavioral
processes that crowdfunding users engage in. Sample size was thus determined in
consideration of “when no new information is forthcoming from new sampled units”
(Linconln & Guba, 1985, as cited in Patten, 1990, p. 186), referred to as saturation
(Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Guest, Bunce, and Johnson (2006) empirically found that
saturation occurs at twelve interviews with saturation operationally defined as “the point
in data collection and analysis when new information produces little or no change to the
codebook” (p. 65). Specifically, they identified 92% of entire codes in the first twelve
interviews (73% were identified in the first six). Following their guidelines, a sample of
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12 or more was targeted for this study.
Sampling strategy. Purposive sampling was employed, that is, cases from which
researchers “can learn a great deal about issues of central importance to the purpose of
the research” (Patten, 1990, p. 169). Patten (1990) and Robinson (2014) identified a
number of non-mutually exclusive strategies that fall under purposive or purposeful
sampling. Of these, I combined intensity sampling and quota sampling.
Intensity sampling seeks “information-rich cases that manifest the phenomenon of
interest intensely” (Patten, 1990, p. 171). To define an intense sample for this study, I
first categorized crowdfunding users into two types who differ in the “role” they play in
typical crowdfunding sites—project creators and backers. Project creators (“creators”
hereafter) are those who create, launch, and/or manage a crowdfunding project, whereas
backers are those who contribute to crowdfunding projects. For creators, those who have
launched at least one crowdfunding project were considered an intense case. It is not
necessary for creators to have launched multiple projects in order to get familiarized with
the context of crowdfunding as they conduct sufficient research about the site and other
projects before they launch their own projects. In fact, it can be even perceived unusual
and undesirable to launch too many projects because the primary purpose of
crowdfunding is to kick-start a project with one-time boost money, especially for those
who are entrepreneurially oriented, and repeatedly asking for external funding for
business may not reflect well on the creator.
An intense sample of backers involves those who have contributed to at least five
crowdfunding projects. For backers, repeat funding is important to understand the site
and its culture as well as the pattern of their own funding experience. Repeat backers who
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have contributed to five or more projects are likely to have a decent level of knowledge
and prolonged interest in crowdfunding. They also comprise the “heavy” backers in
crowdfunding sites as shown in the case of Kickstarter, where those who have backed
more than five projects made up 2% of total backers in 2011 and 6% in 2013 (McGregor
& Benenson, 2013, October 29; Strickler & Benenson, October 11, 2011).
The logic of quota sampling was employed to “capture major variations rather than
to identify a common core” (Patten, 1990, p. 174). Similar to stratified sampling, quota
sampling pre-specifies a set of categories to increase representation of characteristics in
each category. Unlike stratified sampling, the number of cases in each category is not
strictly pre-determined in quota sampling. Quota sampling is appropriate when a
researcher wants to ensure that key groups in the study population are included in the
sample, but cannot guarantee a fixed number of cases in each group to be recruited.
In selecting the categories that differentiate crowdfunding users meaningfully, I
considered genres of crowdfunding projects. As of June 2014, Kickstarter had 15 genres
(i.e., game, film & video, design, technology, music, publishing, food, art, fashion,
comics, theater, photography, dance, journalism, crafts) and Indiegogo has 24 including
most of the Kickstarter genres plus cause-related ones such as animals, community,
education, environment, politics, religion, and so on. Instead of sampling users from all
genres, I selected three large categories that are common in crowdfunding sites and
labeled them as the following: (a) Technology (including technology, games, design), (b)
Art (including film, music, art), and (c) Cause (including community, charity). Projects
related to technology, games, design, film, music, and art comprise approximately 80%
of launched projects in Kickstarter as of June 2014 (Kickstarter, n.d.-b). In addition, the
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crowdfunding market related to causes and charity was estimated to be worth more than
$500 million in 2013 (Miller, n.d.). As such, projects in these three categories together
are dominant forces in the entire landscape of crowdfunding.
In addition to their strong presence in the crowdfunding market, consideration of
the three categories can illuminate different dynamics of creator and backer behaviors.
Specifically, this study conceptualized the differences in terms of (a) the degree to which
“tangible” outputs that communicate the main objective of the project are available as
reward options for backers and (b) the point in time a backer can obtain information
about quality (e.g., before or after funding). These differences are illustrated in Table 1.
For example, technology, games, and design projects tend to set their goal as
creating and manufacturing tangible products, which are also available as reward options
for backers. In return for their contribution, backers are offered an opportunity to
experience and own what they have supported. Backers’ decisions, therefore, often
depend on whether they want to obtain the given item for its functionality and
attractiveness. In addition, the type of rewards for technology/games/design projects is
comparable to “search goods” (Nelson, 1970) for which consumers can get information
about quality prior to purchase. Thus, consumers who look for search goods are in need
of specific information about functional properties of the product (Mudambi & Schuff,
2010).
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Table 1
Categorization of Crowdfunding Projects

Technology
(technology,
games, design)
Art
(film, music, art)
Cause
(community,
charity)
Tangibility of rewards
that embody the project’s
main objective
High Moderate Low
Point in time one can
obtain information about
quality
Before funding After funding
Not determined
or indefinite

Projects related to film, music, and art aim to produce content, and rewards are
typically media (e.g., electronic files or discs) that store the content. Rewards are thus
artistically appreciated rather than haptically used. In addition, although projects in this
category do offer tangible rewards such as a T-shirt or mug, they are tangential to what
the project aims to accomplish, thereby not allowing backers to see and experience what
the project ended up producing. Film, music, and art projects are also types of
“experience goods” whose quality cannot be assessed prior to direct experience (Nelson,
1970). For experience goods, aesthetic attributes, rather than functional attributes, of the
product or content are subjectively perceived and evaluated.
Finally, projects addressing social causes tend not to propose a tangible product or
outcome as their goal. Even if they do, such as creating a physical space for youth
education or art exhibition, the completed goal is often not tangibly sharable with
backers. Projects in this category often offer backers with tangible gifts such as a thank
you card, T-shirt, mug, or tote; however, these gifts do not let backers directly experience
the project outcomes. Unlike the other two categories, it is hard to assess project quality
even after the project gets completed because of the inherent difficulty in defining and
assessing the success of cause-related projects.
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Due to these differences intrinsic to certain genres, users in one category may show
systematically different strategies and preferences in their evaluation and decision
making from users in another category. Quota sampling based on these categories was
employed such that at least one creator who has launched a project in one of the three
categories and one backer who primarily backs in one of the three categories were
included.
Participant recruitment. To recruit interview participants, two methods were used:
(a) snowball sampling and (b) one-on-one email invitations to crowdfunding users
selected through a random process. For both methods, a study information sheet was sent
along with the invitation email.
First, I used the snowball sampling strategy by asking my personal contacts for
recommendations of acquaintances who might qualify for participation. Concurrently, I
sent an invitation email individually to users selected from crowdfunding sites. To reach
crowdfunding users to contact for interview, I first selected three popular crowdfunding
sites that differ in their foci, namely Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and Kiva. Kickstarter is
known for their focus on creative projects in technology and art categories due to their
policy that only allows for projects with the goal of creating something. This restriction
makes Kickstarter populated with entrepreneurs and artists such as startups, filmmakers
and musicians. Indiegogo, on the other hand, does not have such a restriction, thus
attracting individuals and non-profit organizations raising money for social causes and
community development as well as the creative. Kiva, a peer-to-peer lending
organization, was selected to reach heavy backers in the cause category because all
members of Kiva are lenders who provide micro-loans to entrepreneurs and students in
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underdeveloped countries.
In each of the three sites, I set certain rules for searching and filtering and then
randomly selected persons to contact. For example, to recruit creators in Kickstarter and
Indiegogo, I filtered in all U.S.-based completed projects in each of the aforementioned
categories within the last two years; sorted them from the most funded to the least
funded; and randomly chose 10 projects out of the top 100 to easily locate “intense”
cases. Among the selected ones, I only contacted those who posted their personal or
company website from which I obtained contact information. When contact information
was not available for the selected creator, I moved onto the creator next to the previous
one and checked the availability of contact information. To recruit backers in these sites,
the same search strategy as above was used, except that I used the list of backers for the
selected projects, from which a random selection was employed. In Kiva, which makes
only ongoing loans searchable on the site, I reached backers through its team feature.
Kiva members can join a team to connect with other members and/or share loans they
care to fully fund. Highly active backers who are visible in team discussion in top loaning
teams were contacted.
Procedure. Thirteen people participated in the interviews (see Table 2 for profiles
of interview participants). Interviews were conducted via regular phone call, Skype audio
call, video call, or in person depending on the participant’s location and preference, and
audio-recorded. All interview recordings were transcribed in verbatim by professional
transcription services and myself. The length of interviews was 60 minutes on average,
ranging from 30 minutes to an hour and 45 minutes. Participants were awarded a $20
Amazon gift certificate for their participation.
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Each interview was conducted following a semi-structured interview guide. To
develop the interview guide, I first did a pilot interview with a graduate student
researcher who specializes in crowdfunding research. The pilot interview asked questions
about her general experience with crowdfunding, backing experience on Kickstarter in
particular, and insights she gained through direct experience, observation, and academic
research. Only a few guide questions were used and many probing questions were
inductively asked. Based on this pilot interview, two versions of interview guides were
developed for this study, one for creators and one for backers. The interview guides
consisted of four segments: (a) introduction detailing the study purpose and participants’
rights; (b) general questions asking their experience with crowdfunding; (c) specific
questions about project creation and launching experience (for creators) or backing
experience (for backers) on their primary crowdfunding site; and (d) demographic
questions and closing remarks. All creator participants were asked identical questions in
the same order and so were all backer participants; when needed, probing questions were
followed, which were also specified in the interview guides. Each segment is described
below, and the full interview guides can be found in Appendix A.
In the first segment, interviewees were informed about the study including its
purpose, procedure and interviewee’s rights (all of this information was also sent via
email before the interview to give participants enough time to think about participation).
They were then asked to confirm whether they are 18 years old or older; want to
participate in the interview; and permit audio recording.
In the second segment, the set of questions included general questions about
experience with crowdfunding. For example, participants were asked to talk about (a)
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when and how they first learned about crowdfunding; (b) how familiar they are with
different crowdfunding sites; (c) what motivated them to launch [back] the first project;
and (d) how many projects they have launched [backed] so far. In addition, they were
asked to identify their primary crowdfunding site.
The third segment of the interview guide asked participants to specifically talk
about their experience with the primary crowdfunding site. Creators were asked about
how they constructed their creator bio, prepared for project launching, and shared the
project once launched, with a particular focus on their communication strategies.
Interview participants were free to elaborate on any of these topics, but examples and
probing questions were presented when they had difficulty specifying their answers.
Backers were also asked to specifically discuss their experience with their primary
crowdfunding site. They were then asked about how they usually find a project to fund,
search information in the project page, and decide to fund the project or not, with a
particular focus on their strategies to evaluate credibility, both of the creators and project.
They were also asked to describe their post-funding behavior, that is, what they do to
track the progress and completion of projects they funded. As the last question, both
creators and backers were asked to share their insights into factors that might lead to
successful funding, after having observed and launched [funded] crowdfunding projects.
At the end of the interview, participants were asked basic demographic questions
(e.g., age range, occupation) and thanked for participation.
Coding. Transcripts were coded using NVivo, computer software for qualitative
data analysis. As discussed by Patten (1990) and Miles and Huberman (1994), interviews
can be analyzed with case analysis or cross-case analysis. I began with a brief case
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analysis to describe each interview participant’s demographic information and their role
and activities in their primary crowdfunding sites. However, since the purpose of this
interview is to identify backers’ motivations and creators’ and backers’ cognitive and
behavioral processes with regard to credibility construction and evaluation across cases,
the major focus of this study is cross-case analysis, which involves analyzing similar and
different perspectives from interview participants to common issues. To conduct cross-
case analysis, first, descriptive codes that entail little interpretation were given to the
interview data (Miles & Huberman, 1994). A single sentence could be given multiple
codes if the participant included multiple distinct concepts and actions in one sentence.
Thus, a code was given to a word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph that describes a unique
concept or action. Then, these codes were reorganized by making connections between
them. For example, when coding backers’ decision making criteria, after coding all
criteria mentioned by the participants, patterns and relationships between these codes
were identified such that some were considered to pertain to the creator’s attributes while
others concerned the project such as its timeline, budget, and reward options. In addition,
since not all people explicitly mentioned the concept credibility, codes related to
credibility dimensions were identified and later organized together in order to observe a
pattern beyond a single case. The results reported below include a brief description of
each interview participant and cross-case findings from all interviews.
Results
Participant profiles. Table 2 summarizes profiles of the interview participants.
Seven creators and six backers participated. Creators have launched crowdfunding
projects in Kickstarter and/or Indiegogo in various genres including film, music,
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technology, fashion, food, and causes. Backers include four Kickstarter users, one
Kickstarter and Indiegogo user, and one Kiva user, who have backed projects in
technology, design, music, art, games, comics, and causes. A pseudonym was created to
refer to each participant, using two pieces of information—their role in their primary
crowdfunding site and genres they are interested in—to efficiently communicate their
background information. For example, a creator in film is called C_Film and a backer in
technology is called B_Tech.
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Table 2
Profiles of Interview Participants

Role Genre Pseudonym Bio Project bio (Creator)
Number of
backed projects
(Backer)
Creator Film C_Film Male, 25-34 years
old, Film producer
Launched three Indiegogo and
one Kickstarter campaigns about
his short films during graduate
school from 2012 to 2013. Raised
about $4000 in total but none of
these campaigns met funding
goal.
!
Creator Fashion C_Fashion Female, 25-34 years
old, Jewelry designer
Launched one Kickstarter project
to fund the startup costs for her
jewelry business in 2013. Raised
$2,623 of $1,700 goal.
!
Creator Music, Film C_MusicFilm Male, 25-34 years
old, Digital
producer/Youtube
musician
Launched one Kickstarter project
to fund production costs for a
documentary film and a full-
length music album about his
adoption story in 2013. Raised
$34,456 of $25,000 goal.
!
Creator Art/Film C_Art/Film Male, 25-34 years
old, Graduate student
Launched one Kickstarter project
to fund production costs for a
film about a local art project in
2013. Raised $7,492 of $4,700.
!
Creator Cause C_Cause Female, 35-44 years
old, Writer/Branding
strategist
Launched one Indiegogo project
to fund community supported
small business micro-loans in
2013. Raised $6,605 of $6,000
goal.
!
Creator Tech C_Tech Male, 25-34 years Launched one Kickstarter project !
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old, Graduate
student/Research
assistant
to fund manufacturing costs for a
DIY invention kit in 2012.
Raised $568,106 of $25,000 goal
Creator Food C_Food Male, 25-34 years
old, Entrepreneur
Launched one Kickstarter project
to fund the first batch of Indian
chutneys for the American
mainstream market in 2012.
Raised $26,527 of $5,000 goal.
!
Backer Music, Tech B_MusicTech Male, 25-34 years
old,
Educator/Musician
! 6 (Kickstarter and
Indiegogo)
Backer Tech, Design B_TechDesign Female, 35-44 years
old, Physician
! 34 (Kickstarter)
Backer Game, Comics B_GameComics Male, 35-44 years
old, Graduate student
! 6 (Kickstarter)
Backer Tech B_Tech Male, 35-44 years
old, Pharmacist
! 21 (Kickstarter)
Backer Tech, Art B_TechArt Male, 25-34 years
old, Media artist/Art
college lecturer
! 29 (Kickstarter)
Backer Cause B_Cause Male, over 45 years
old, Retired lawyer
! 2000 (Kiva)
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Cross-case findings. Findings are organized as follows. First, some preliminary
information about interview participants is summarized, particularly with regards to their
first experience with crowdfunding and creators’ choice of primary crowdfunding
platform. Next, findings with regard to RQ1, 2, and 3 are presented.
Many were introduced to crowdfunding externally. For many participants,
whether creator or backer, their first experience with crowdfunding started with
someone’s recommendation or word of mouth from a community they are actively
involved in. B_MusicTech said a friend of his had posted something on Facebook about a
crowdfunding project on Kickstarter, which he found interesting enough to consider
backing. Similarly, B_TechDesign first heard about crowdfunding when her wife sent her
link to a project she backed. In addition, many creators and backers whose occupation has
affinity to the creative industries had already known someone directly who has launched
a project. C_Film recalled hearing about crowdfunding just naturally in his work because
raising money is an oft-discussed topic among independent filmmakers because of the
high need to finance their film projects. B_TechArt, who is a full-time media artist and
art college instructor, had been well connected with the community of makers and
creative artists, which got him exposed to different crowdfunding projects as he
frequently interacted with them. The project he first backed called ModKit was launched
by a person he met at an event for a creative learning community using the programming
language Scratch, as he noted:
I went to Scratch Day in MIT in 2010. ModKit was a company founded by an
MIT graduate and I met him on Scratch Day because his booth was next to mine.
Later, he sent out emails to people he met at that event about his Kickstarter
project and asked for support. So, for this one, I just purely wanted to support
him. I pledged $30.

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Only one creator (C_Food) said he had long been interested in crowdfunding
before it became popular, so much so that he wanted to make his own crowdfunding
company before Kickstarter.
Creators’ choice of crowdfunding platform is bounded by site-wise regulations.
Creators considered various factors when they were choosing a platform to launch their
project. Most participants said they do not see noticeable differences across different
crowdfunding platforms these days in terms of interface design and ease of transaction.
Still, Kickstarter was preferred by many creators. Advantages of using Kickstarter from a
creator’s perspective were cited as its power to easily spread the word through people’s
social networks, staff support, and mainstream reputation, as C_Tech noted:
I think that Kickstarter has a very powerful network effect. They use several
different ways to increase the power of social media in this, like, keep spreading
the word and getting people’s donations. One of them is people who have backed
Kickstarter see what their friends have backed and in various other ways on the
site see new things. Since they’re already in the system, it’s like just a couple of
clicks to back something, super easy… they also, like, have email newsletters and
that kind of stuff. That generated a huge impulse—huge burst of traffic for us
when they featured us in their newsletter during our campaign. They are very
supportive. They liked our project a lot. So they helped us… and just because they
are the first major player as far as I know, they have a better—they have sort of a
trustworthy name, so to speak. Like, because within the past couple of years
they’ve gotten, like, you know, on NPR or whatever, they’re talking about Pebble.
That probably entered a lot of people’s consciousness in the mainstream.

However, Kickstarter is not for everyone because of its regulation against
fundraising for a charity or cause. Because of this regulation, C_Cause, who was raising
donations for establishing community micro-loans, had initially considered Kickstarter,
but ended up choosing Indiegogo. In addition, Kickstarter has the “all-or-nothing” policy
which allows only fully funded projects to secure the pledged money. This restriction
generated mixed feelings from creators. Some saw it as a good motivator to make the
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project successful. However, C_Food said it’s not always easy to get projects fully
funded. Keeping the maximum amount of money of what was raised was a critical
concern for some, especially C_Film, who was raising funds for his team’s film project.
His team posted their film project on Indiegogo, but told their friends and family not to
donate through Indiegogo. He explained:
Even though we have it all, we had a separate a donation privately through PayPal
so that people can donate, just have a donation so that Indigogo doesn’t take the
fee. When there's a transaction on PayPal and it's not of service or you're paying
for good, and it's just a gift from a relative or gift from a friend or donation or
something then you actually get to keep the whole money. So, what we did was
for our second project, is to put up the Indiegogo website so we have a platform
but we actually encouraged people not to donate through that. So, we actually did
get a lot of money through PayPal and not just through IndieGoGo.

RQ1: Backers’ motivation for backing crowdfunding projects vary. Backers’
motivations for participating in crowdfunding varied from self-centered to other-centered.
First, some contributions were largely driven by backers’ desire to own the promised
reward. For example, B_TechArt said,
I just wanted the product reward from the project. It was hard to get in other
places. It was unique, new, and attractive … I see Kickstarter as a place to get
some items. It’s like a shopping mall to me.

Similarly, B_Tech said he would back a project if it provides s a product he is “really
interested in owning.” B_TechDesign had backed Pebble, the smartwatch project on
Kickstarter that collected the largest funding ever on the site, because it seemed “useful”
for her, as she noted:

…one is that I thought it was a good idea. I love my phone but I could never here
it ring, and so I missed phone calls all the time, and so here is this device that
would tear up my phone and it just seemed like it made a lot of sense to me, and
so I thought yeah let me do it.

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When backers contribute to a project they are truly interested in, they choose to pay just
enough to receive a tangible reward. B_MusicTech said when backing music project, he
would contribute the lowest amount that gives him a copy of the album. B_TechArt said
he would select “the reward that provides a full experience of the completed project,” and
because he has limited budget, he would only back projects that offer such reward at the
range of money he can afford.
On the other hand, to some projects, backers decided to contribute because they
wanted to support the creators. In some cases, they knew the creators personally while
others would back projects to support the creators even when they did not know them
personally. B_MusicTech described his experience of backing a live musician that he had
not known before:
[I backed] because I really like the artist. So there was some music project … and
I just really listened on his music and so I decided to fund it … there was no
guarantee in terms of like getting an album or anything, like I just kind of gave a
minimal amount. So that was more just because I felt like, oh, man, well it's not
that much money and you give. And on top of that, I feel like that little for them if
they get a lot of people giving for that little amount, then that funds their project
… I generally fund live music. So for people who are playing live music. That's
something I generally fund. Only because I know and I understand that it's very
expensive to have a lot of people playing together in a room. And it's a dying art.

When the motivation for backing was to support the creators, backers choose the lowest
amount of money that can still be helpful for the creators even if they would not receive
any tangible reward that allows them to experience the project’s outcome.
B_GameComics contributed to the Veronica Mars Movie project on Kickstarter because
of his like and respect of the producers. He backed the project and selected a T-shirt
instead of access to watch the full movie, which he is “happy with.”
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Supporting the broader community of which the creator is part was also an
important motivator for contribution especially when the community, in their view, needs
support. B_GameComics backed a few interactive fiction projects because he wanted to
support the community, which is “very small and not very well known,” and needs his
support. B_TechArt also backed an indie game project because “it’s an indie game and I
wanted to support the indie game community.” However, interestingly, supporting the
community is not simply manifested in backers’ monetary contribution. Some backers’
criteria for choosing projects to back or not to back highlight their deep understanding of
the community and concern for its sustainable development beyond one-time successful
crowdfunding. For example, B_GameComics raised concern about some game projects
that ask for “too little.” He elaborated:
Some of the video game projects I didn’t fund—it wasn’t their lack of reputation
… the money they asked for wasn’t realistic. Some case, it was too low. I read
stories and articles about how game developers who asked little money, and how
they didn’t complete the project and didn’t have a decent living. I’m worried if
it’s not going to cover their salary and for the team. If it looks like they’ll live on
noodle, I don’t think it’s good for them. It may not be a sensible idea for them.
Developing indie games is not great. I feel weird, when they ask for really low
amount of money. Asking low amount of money implies that this may be a
charity contribution. Then maybe I should just give money to charity. This project
is less likely to be finished. The person will not be able to live a decent living.

Backers’ empathy and cooperativeness toward creators are also manifested in
their post-backing behavior. Backers want the creators to finish their project, but they are
willing to wait. For B_TechDesign, creators’ responsibility and backers’ responsibility
are distinct by contract. She believes that backers decide to give their money to a project
to support, but it is ultimately “up to the creators to complete it how they see fit.” Other
backers simply understand that creators need time to complete their projects and are
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willing to give them sufficient time for completion. B_TechArt, when asked about
whether he keeps track of project progress after backing, said:
I’m willing to wait even if it takes a while to finish the project. But I do check if it
takes too long. For three months, I pretty much forget about it. I assume that it
takes at least three months. I don’t care at all for three months. Well even for six
months. But I do receive emails from the creator, which makes me aware of the
project. Even if the updates say that they are struggling, that’s fine.

For B_MusicTech, who is a part-time musician himself, empathy toward creators arises
from his own experience and interaction with other artists, as he said:
I think being a part of creative projects before, I feel like not kind of having to
explain yourself to people. Takes away from the actual process of trying to make
that thing. And so I think for me that's something like when I see someone even if
it's a friend, I see them really trying to make something or involved in something.
Then I generally just try to give them space because adding more inquiry just
makes it harder for them when I check. It's time away from them actually making
something.

In summary, the array of backers’ motivations suggests they are neither
completely consumer-like nor completely donor-like. Even those who back a project
because of the desired product showed their patience, understanding, and empathy for the
creators and their surrounding community, which is not characteristic of business-
customer relations. Yet, to say that they are generous donors that purely fund someone
else’s ideas is misleading, considering that they carefully invest money to what they
deem valuable to themselves and are strongly concerned with obtaining rewards in return.
RQ2: Creators try to communicate their project as accessible, meaningful, and
credible. The second research question asked: How are the dimensions of credibility
applied and manifested in project creators’ communication strategies as they prepare,
launch, and share their projects? As noted in the above method, interview participants
were asked to recall and describe everything they included in their project page and give
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their rationale rather than describe strategies to enhance credibility specifically. From
their responses, I identified three general themes in creators’ communication strategies:
accessible, meaningful, and credible.
First, many creators stressed that they spent a lot of time planning how to make
their content accessible to potential backers. All creator participants mentioned to some
degree that they tried to make their message sound as clear, specific, and easy to
understand as possible, whether in a video or text. Many of them had reviewed other
projects before launching their own and learned a lesson from others’ failure, which was
often due to poor communication of project visions and messages. C_Art/Film said, “the
best Kickstarter videos are really specific, they tell you what their plan is, and why they
need the money.” C_Cause tried a number of specific strategies to make content “easy to
digest,” including writing and rewriting of project statement; highlighting the core
message in the very beginning; and keeping content under a set word count and in the
form easy to digest.
Along the line with accessibility, most creators mentioned “fun” and “short” as
important elements of information in project details, especially in videos. C_Art/Film
argued,
it needs to be fun, it needs to be something—it needs to be less than four minutes,
because I do not think that people have the time or the interest or the attention
span to watch a really long text [or] video … to try and get more backers, I think
it needs a little bit of humor.

The emphasis on short content was echoed by C_Film who said, “I think that's generally
in the case like people want to see a good short video, nothing too long.” C_Fashion
believed that the ideal length of videos should be two minutes or under, and said she “cut
a lot from original draft” because the original draft was just too long and rambling.
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Making the message accessible is not limited to editing strategies. Some took it
further by incorporating accessibility as a core theme for their project. C_Tech, for
example, in his project on a DIY invention kit, tried to “emphasize that this is possible for
anyone,” by “trying to push back against that culture of the elites, sort of technical
prestige, the cultural barrier that people have to do things that are all adhering to
technology.” To address such issues, they made a “funny,” short-paced video, which
features creators’ playing with the kit and connecting it with a variety of everyday
objects. The objects were chosen in consideration of accessibility, as he explained:
Well, in the video, we have a whole sequence of wacky examples. The contexts
for those were carefully chosen to be things that the internet loves. Use of a
banana is not a coincidence, there’s something funny about bananas that the
internet likes … Same goes for Mario Bros. Like any video involving like
someone playing the Mario Bros. seem of instrument, like people would share.
They just love that. There’s something about the overlap of the demographic of
internet users who played Mario Bros. as a child … and then same goes obviously
for Pac-Man, even a little bit of Dance Dance Revolution, oh, and cats, there’s a
cat in the video, the gentle cats. So those, we thought about, like, okay, what are
the ingredients of a viral video? Let's see as many of them as we can.

Another theme that emerged from creators’ communication strategies was to
make their project perceived as meaningful for backers. Many emphasized the importance
of communicating values for backers. C_Art/Film argued that a project must encourage
backers to believe that “giving them money is going to help them make something of
even better value.” Such values can be practical such as usefulness, and prosocial such as
helping local businesses and community. For example, C_Fashion created her pitch,
imagining her target audience as people who appreciate local handmade items, local
boutiques, and who care about where material comes from, especially ethical sources.
C_Cause’s project on community-supported micro-loans was inherently prosocially
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focused, but she made extra effort to communicate the prosocial value of her project by
including sufficient information about potential impacts of her project.
Another way creators used to make their project more meaningful for backers was
to stress that backers are part of the project, either symbolically or literally. C_Cause tried
to include inspirational and invitational messages, as she noted:
… we tried to put as much sort of inspirational content, you know, on the project
description as possible because for us we really felt like if we could leverage the
groundswell of support that alternative solutions seem to have, you know—I think
that’s why crowdfunding is so popular these days is that there isn’t access to
resources in a way that everyone is used to it or if there is, it’s not working as well
as it used to so, it’s easier to just go out and get the money ourselves and not
behold into a funder or an investor, or whatever. So, we tried to include as much
inspirational stuff as possible like, “The revolution has begun. Be a part of it.”
“Rather than working low-wage jobs that drain our joy, we choose
empowerment.”

C_Fashion went further by actually engaging backers in her project completion.
She made top reward levels such as $70 and $100 custom jewelry. She co-designed
jewelry by asking the backers about their styles and what they do in their job, and offered
them a few options. C_Art/Film and his team threw a Kickstarter kickoff party in
Columbus, Ohio, by inviting people in the Ohio art scene, many of whom became a
backer in their Kickstarter project. Such a party made sense for their project because the
film they were planning to make was about one of the local artists.
Finally, credibility was manifested in creators’ communication strategies through
their emphasis on making professional-looking videos; showing/demonstrating the
project visually; being authentic; sharing creator stories; and making frequent and
transparent updates. Professionalism was often mentioned in relation to video making.
Obviously, making professional-looking videos was a big concern for filmmakers—C
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Art/Film, C_Film—as videos are direct channels for communicating their expertise.
C_Film particularly noted,
[We wanted to show] we know what we're doing. We're not just bunch of idiots
who don't know how to make films … it's like we actually have to show there's a
legitimate production.

Non-filmmakers like C_Fashion described how she saw many bad videos “with
dim light, sound not synced, and in one long take” from other projects, which pushed her
to invest herself in making a quality video in order not to look “sloppy.” For her, the
lighting setup for shooting her video was important to show her pieces of jewelry as
accurately as possible, that is, to show her expertise and work. On a similar note, some
creators made sure to demonstrate the working prototype of their work through the video
so that backers can believe in project feasibility as well as understand the product in
action. C_Tech discussed this issue:
I mean I think the demonstration of the thing itself is the most important aspect,
and especially in this case [DIY invention kit] because it’s hard to explain what it
is in words, especially with someone without a technical background, in such a
way that they can actually understand what’s interesting about it. So that was
critical for this to make certain.

In addition to looking expert and legitimate, creators wanted to seem authentic
and like “a real person.” C_Art/Film put it this way when describing how his team wrote
a narrative for their project:
… it is well written but it sounds like something that a real human wrote, not just
like generic copy. And the video in particular, we wanted to just feel sort of
people that you would want to spent time with … we added little details … so that
it felt human, and it felt fun, instead of just like a generic pitch video.

For some of them, looking like a real person took not associating themselves with
for-profit businesses. C_Fashion described how she drafted her pitch video as the
following:
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[I wanted] to seem like a real person. I didn’t want to seem like a corporate. So, I
added a little life story like where I came from, what kind of family I have, and
why I moved to LA. I think people who want to shop handmade would be
interested in this kind of stuff.

C_Tech and his teammate appeared themselves in their project video and one of the
persona or themes they wanted to exude was, “we’re makers, we’re scrappy, we’re going
to do it with your help, not with some fancy venture capital money.”
Direct communication with backers through updates also reflects creators’ efforts
to build trust. During the fundraising period, C_Film put backers’ names on their website
to express special thanks. C_Cause had devised a plan for posting updates including
timeline prior to launching her project and posted an update every week. C_Fashion
updated her backers whenever there was “news.” For example, she posted an update a
week after funding started, in midway into the funding period, when she ordered supplies,
when the supplies arrived, when coupon codes were available, and so on. She then sent
backers a handwritten thank-you note along with the requested rewards. C_Film
explained his rationale for updating his backers with their progress and upcoming events
as the following:
To the people who supported the film, we'd say hey, you know we just finished
the film. We're going to do our first screening if you like to come, please. This is
where we're going to be screening at or hey, now that the film is done, you can
send up the perks. We kept up to date on that. And, we make sure to let the people
know like hey, we didn't just run away with your money.

It was also important for creators to be transparent with their backers about their plan and
progress instead of making false and unrealistic promises. C_Fashion kept updating her
backers with timelines, which had to be revised due to errors made by her supply
wholesaler. When this accident happened, she was being “honest about it” and made
clear in her update that backers would be unable to receive their rewards until a certain
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date. C_Art/Film stressed his team’s emphasis on executing the project as promised so as
to build trust not just with his backers but for the community of Kickstarter users. He
illustrated:
There are a lot of horror stories of Kickstarters, where they would make these big
promises, and then they cannot do it. And people get upset, and people feel like—
that just I think—that just sort of ruins the whole community or pains the whole
community. So we wanted to just make sure that we are being good to this. And
this is about the whole thing. And when you are asking someone for money, to do
something that you want to do, and they are not really going to get anything out of
it, other than the satisfaction of knowing that they helped. You got to be—you got
to come through, and you got to be a very decent human being about it.

In summary, creators took care and made extensive efforts for establishing
credibility or presenting themselves as someone as competent, genuine, and caring about
backers. They did so through various communication strategies that involve making
videos, creating narratives, and sharing progress updates. These findings suggest that
credibility in crowdfunding websites is constructed through multiple venues and methods
beyond a creator’s profile information.
One of interesting and somewhat unexpected findings from the interviews is that
many creators were unable to recall what they had written in their creator profile page
whereas they had vivid memory of what they took into consideration in creating project-
related content and updates. When presented with the question as to what they wrote in
their creator profile page, none remembered anything off the top of their head. Creator
participants ended up remembering the process of writing their creator profile after
visiting their own page, but they unanimously reported having given little care to writing
their bio. In addition, none of them had updated their profile since the first version.
Creators’ lack of care in constructing their profile page, however, does not necessarily
suggest the lack of interest in communicating credibility. As shown above, dimensions of
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credibility are manifested through venues other than the profile page, especially centered
around their work, the project.
RQ3: Backers prefer creators who are creative; skilled at executing creativity;
genuine and sincere; and caring. The third research question aims to understand
backers’ credibility judgments, especially dimensions of credibility that are manifested in
their information searching and backing decisions. The foremost thing backers
considered when they evaluated projects and decided to back or not was how the
creator’s idea is creative, innovative, and unique. Uniqueness was mentioned by every
backer participant but B_Cause as an important element of what they consider a good
project. For backers, unique projects are things that they “haven’t really heard before”
(B_MusicTech), are “different from other products that are currently available”
(B_Tech), and provide “a different way of looking at a problem” (B_TechDesign).
Uniqueness is also different from being merely fun and interesting as B_TechArt said,
… there are many online niche shops out there that sell geek toys and interesting
products. Sometimes, there’s some overlap between those geeky interesting
products and Kickstarter projects. I’m not that interested in these kinds of
products. If I want to get any of these products, I’d just buy them at that store
because it’s already available and will be delivered fast. Maybe I want originality
from Kickstarter projects.

The appreciation of uniqueness is strongly tied with backers’ conceptions about
crowdfunding or more specifically technology projects in Kickstarter. B_Tech and
B_TechArt both said their motivation to back Kickstarter projects is to find and obtain a
product that is not readily available in mass market. B_Tech spoke about the value of
Kickstarter as the following:
I think that’s really nice that Kickstarter allows products to exist that don’t really
exist for venture capital funding. This is just you and me saying that’s cool … so
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that’s when I feel the usefulness of Kickstarter. It allows things to exist that don’t
usually exist.

In addition to unique, creative ideas, backers examine whether the creators are
capable of making ideas happen, similar to the expertise dimension of credibility. They
make judgments of creators’ ability to execute the project by looking at timeline and
budget (B_Tech), level of preparation and effort (B_TechArt), availability of functional
prototypes (B_TechArt), and past work and reputation (B_GameComics). Backers,
however, were not interested in creators’ “formal” credentials such as awards,
recognitions, and affiliations. For example, B_GameComics did not need to worry about
creators’ expertise when he backed the Veronica Mars project because he knew about the
people already. Similarly, in cases of supporting friends and acquaintances’ projects,
credibility had been already established.
What piqued backers’ interest in terms of creators’ ability to complete the project
had more to do with “stories” that creators share about the project. B_MusicTech said,
I guess I'm just looking for someone who has an interesting story more so than
like what they have done in the past kind of thing. I think every bio that I've read
always talks about like what they've done in the past. But I generally read more
deeply when there's more of an interesting story behind the bio as opposed to
them just tell you what they did.

B_TechArt who is a maker himself said he is more interested in the details of the process
by which the creator has gone through to make the product. He elaborated:
I like to hear about the process of making. Also, it’s kind of funny, but I like when
creators are sort of otaku. Like when they know so much [about] what they do and
their products. For example, the Oscilloscope Watch and the titanium pen I
backed. The product itself may not be so sophisticated. But they know exactly
what they make. In very fine details. It’s not simply a matter of professionalism.
They know all the nuanced little details about the product and know what is
attractive about the product.

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While they look for creators capable of achieving the goal, backers believe such
expertise must be communicated with genuineness and sincerity, suggesting the
trustworthiness dimension of credibility. B_Tech said he would evaluate whether creators
make a “good pitch” especially in videos by looking at their emotion, as he said:
I liked their pitch. Particularly their pitch video. I like to see if they invested into
their products like if they’re really passionate about it or if they just want a quick
buck. You could tell right away. So that’s what I look at, I look at their
enthusiasm in their video … so if you see someone pitch about their product, you
couldn’t care less about it unless they’re really really good. I can really tell if
they’re passionate about what they’re doing.

Similarly, B_TechDesign said, “it's the passion of the inventor that can sell it to you.”
B_TechArt stressed that he not only cares about the attractiveness of creator’s story, but
also how genuine and real it is. Related to this issue, he shared an interesting anecdote:
For some projects, recently, I heard that videos feature people other than the
creator. For example, the creator is Asian and doesn’t speak good English, but the
video features a well-spoken, good-looking speaker. I heard that some people
make videos on behalf of creators. Maybe I could be duped by this kind of
practice. But I don’t think I’ve been tricked by such projects because creators I
back tend to be makers who show their own products and the making process. I
don’t think I would be attracted to videos that are so professionally made. Videos
like ads don’t attract me. I like when creators show up in the video, describing
what they did in details and telling their feelings and experience, what efforts they
made, what mistakes they did etc. If they just introduce their product like in an ad,
I’m not impressed.

Finally, backers showed preference toward creators who care to create values for
backers and others, which relate to the caring or goodwill dimension of credibility. For
example, for B_TechDesign, backing a project means that she became “part of” the
project. She has backed a local street dance festival on Kickstarter, from which she felt a
sense of participation and involvement in assisting the local event she cares about. Other
backers consider whether the project creators speak of a “big message” related to the
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project’s extended impact at a societal level. Along that line, B_MusicTech said the
following:
I think what they're creating is actually very simple. And it's not like that big of a
deal in the sense that it's often a product. It's something you can hold in your hand
and something that you could experience. But for me, I feel like when you take
that and use it, it has to open up a whole other word for me … and I think that
that's the story element that I find needs to be communicated. Like the most recent
thing I gave to was solar roadways. And when I saw that I was like this is a no-
brainer, like it's amazing. Just that one little thing, I'm like yeah, you can – I'll
give you like 20 bucks or something, right. And the reason why I would give to
that is because I could totally see that simple idea of that's completely going to
change the way we think of everything … it's showing you how this little small
thing is attached to that really big thing.

In summary, backers’ criteria for evaluating and choosing projects to fund reflect
their consideration of attributes associated with creator credibility. Backers glean
information suggestive of these attributes from creators’ video and text description.
Similar to creators, creator’s profile information did not receive substantial attention by
backers although some backers reported they would check only if any doubt arises. This
does not suggest that creator’s credibility is not judged. Rather, findings with regards to
RQ2 and RQ3 together show that credibility is constructed and judged by cues that are
both directly and indirectly associated with the creator in crowdfunding websites.
Discussion
Findings from Study 1 enrich the existing knowledge of crowdfunding dynamics
and add some new insights. First, the diversity of backers’ motives for contribution
found in the interview study by Gerber et al. (2012) is confirmed in the current study.
This study, however, has unique contributions to understanding backer motivations.
Compared to the participants in Gerber et al. (2012)’s study who have backed lightly (one
to three projects), the selection criteria in the current study allowed more heavy backers’
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voices to be heard. In particular, their motivations and criteria for funding reveal not only
the diversity of motives manifested in parallel but also an interesting interplay between
them. For example, backers who mainly fund technology projects seek rewards just like a
typical consumer, but they show willingness to wait and satisfaction with periodical
updates from creators even if they report mistakes, errors, and accidents. They show
empathetic concern toward creators by giving them space and time or by not funding
projects that are too modest. On the other hand, what seems like a philanthropic
contribution on the surface, such as supporting the creator without a tangible reward in
return, is qualified by their adjustment of contribution to a minimum and short-lived
involvement after funding. Such nuanced findings in the current study suggest that one
must not simply assume that contribution is purely prosocial or that noncontribution is
purely selfish.
Study 1 is also the first study that specifically examines communication aspects of
crowdfunding. In-depth interviews with experienced and knowledgeable creators and
backers revealed their communication strategies to construct and evaluate credibility,
which were not found in prior research. Interview findings suggest that the three
dimensions of credibility hold relevance to the crowdfunding context. Creators are
concerned about presenting themselves and their project as credible by making quality
videos and narratives; coming across as real and genuine; and mindful of and sensitive to
others’ interests and concerns. Backers seem to respond to creators’ strategies as they
choose creators that have great ideas and skills to execute them; are genuinely passionate
about their work; and care to create values that benefit a wider community rather than
themselves. These findings not only confirm the three-dimensional approach to
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credibility, but also refine it by showing how the theoretical constructs are manifested in
a specific context. Especially, it is noteworthy that these constructs were not revealed
through their exclusive attention to “source credibility.” Neither creator nor backer was
explicitly concerned about how to look credible or how to identify a credible creator
through features like creator profiles. Rather, creators use various outlets and channels
and backers process a comprehensive array of cues to make credibility judgments. These
findings are reminiscent of social information processing theory (Walther, 1992), which
suggests that people use whatever information that is available to make judgments about
other people when they are motivated to do so. The present findings also challenge
researchers to consider a variety of cues, including those not proximal to the source, as
potential cues triggering credibility assessment.

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CHAPTER 4: A Motivational Approach to Credibility Evaluation in Crowdfunding
Previous chapters have shown that credibility research to date has largely ignored
motivational factors, and have confirmed the validity of the three-dimensional model of
credibility and applicability of social motivation in the crowdfunding context. Building
on both the theoretical and empirical grounds, this chapter will propose specific
hypotheses with regard to the role of motivation—social motivation, in particular—in
shaping credibility evaluation and behavioral outcomes in crowdfunding.
Motivation in Credibility Evaluation
So far, in credibility research, when researchers discuss motivation, they mostly
refer to the motivation to critically evaluate or scrutinize the message, which is a central
factor in the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) and the
Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM) (Chaiken, 1980). Motivation arose as an important
factor to resolve inconsistent findings in persuasion research as, for instance, positive
factors such as expert sources were not consistently favored (Petty & Wegener, 1999).
The so-called dual-process theories such as ELM and HSM explain the inconsistency:
assuming that individuals are “cognitive misers,” they will process information
effortfully and systematically only when they are motivated and able to do so. Thus, it
follows that receivers who are highly involved with the topic of a given message, and
able to understand it, are more likely to focus on the message, and less influenced by
peripheral or heuristic cues such as source credibility. Motivation discussed in this line of
theories can be summarized as the motivation for holding accurate beliefs and attitudes,
referred to as accuracy motivation (S. Chen & Chaiken, 1999). It is important to note,
however, that these models will hold relevance to a certain context to the extent that the
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motivation for accuracy is of paramount importance in that context (Metzger, 2007; Petty
& Wegener, 1999).
On the other hand, contexts in which individuals process information online may
activate goals other than evaluating information for its accuracy. They may still prefer
accurate information to inaccurate information, but it may not always be the foremost
criterion for selecting sources and information to rely on. For example, when deciding to
like, comment, or share on social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter, the
receiver’s relationship with the source may override accuracy judgment about the source,
as the motivation to satisfy social goals becomes salient (S. Chen & Chaiken, 1999). In
the context of health information seeking, patients may rely on other patients based on
shared conditions and symptoms even if accuracy of peer knowledge has not been
confirmed yet. Finally, and relevant to this current research’s focus, in contexts where
prosocial motivation can affect people’s behavior such as crowdfunding, peer-to-peer
lending or donation sites, donors or lenders may interpret the need for support in
fundraisers and borrowers more positively than the quality of pitch. Research shows that
81% of loans on Kiva, a peer-to-peer micro-loan site, have been made to women, and
loans from women fund faster (Ly & Mason, 2012). This finding suggests that the
motivation particular to the given context may direct individuals’ attention to cues
consistent to their motivation more than cues that indicate information accuracy.
As previously discussed, users’ activities online, including economic ones, are
more and more social and assisted by social networking technologies, making users’
connections and interactions ever more visible. That economic behavior is not purely
rational and driven by self-interest (Granovetter, 1985) may be even more of the case in
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today’s networked media environment. Research also suggests that online shoppers are
found to “enjoy a sense of community” (Joines, Scherer, & Scheufele, 2003, p. 97) and
online shopping is significantly correlated with the motivation to build social
relationships. In crowdfunding, as shown in the above interview study, creators and
backers show cooperation and trust by taking the other party’s interest and well-being
into consideration in addition to their own in their communication and decision making.
Yet, despite recognizing that online consumers are involved in social, interdependent
situations, little is known about how online consumers’ variations in prosocial inclination
have any implications for cognitive and behavioral processes.
Social Motivation
In light of the aforementioned gap, I propose the concept of social motivation, or
individual preference for outcome distributions between self and other (de Dreu &
Carnevale, 2003), as a factor that shapes individuals’ information processing, specifically
credibility evaluation, and behavior in online p2p economy, particularly crowdfunding.
de Dreu and Carnevale (2003) proposed the motivated model of information processing
that predicts how different types of motivation affect information processing in
negotiation contexts, which in turn affect negotiation outcomes. Particularly, the model
suggests two global classes of motivation: epistemic motivation and social motivation.
Epistemic motivation refers to willingness to achieve an accurate understanding of the
reality, similar to the accuracy motivation that the dual-process models deal with. Social
motivation is defined as the preference for outcome distributions between oneself and the
other party and can be further categorized into two types—proself (concerned with one’s
own outcomes only) and prosocial (concerned with a fair distribution maximizing both
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parties’ outcomes) (de Dreu & Carnevale, 2003; de Dreu, Nijstad, & van Knippenberg,
2008). Social motivation is thus applicable to interpersonal, group, organizational
contexts in which individuals process information while appraising the value of resources
to be allocated for self and other.
Social motivation is related to other concepts such as social value orientation
(Messick & McClintock, 1968; van Lange, De Bruin, Otten, & Joireman, 1997). Social
value orientation refers to “stable preferences for certain patterns of outcomes for oneself
and others” (van Lange et al., 1997, p. 733). Based on the degree of social value
orientation, individuals are identified as prosocial/cooperative, individualistic, or
competitive. Prosocials are concerned about maximizing outcomes for both self and
other; individualists focus on maximizing their own gain with little concern for other’s;
and competitors try to maximize their own gain relative to other’s, increasing the
difference between the gains (van Lange et al., 1997). Social value orientation is
conceived as a stable personal trait. However, de Dreu et al. (2008) argue that situational
or contextual factors may “overrule” individual factors, by pointing to evidence that
individuals respond differently to features of the situation that define their counterpart
differently (e.g., “partner” vs “opponent”).
Research following the motivated information processing perspective found that
social motivation affects individuals’ perception and behavior. For example, in
negotiation contexts, prosocial individuals made lower demands, perceived the
counterpart more fairly, and showed a greater regard for the other’s well-being than
individualists and competitors (de Dreu & van Lange, 1995). In addition, social
motivation affects the ways in which individuals select information. For example, people
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with prosocial orientation recalled more cooperative heuristics and less competitive
heuristics for negotiation; competitors and individualists showed the opposite pattern (De
Dreu & Boles, 1998).
In addition, de Dreu et al. (2006) examined an interaction between social
motivation and epistemic motivation (manipulated by process accountability) in
information processing. They found that prosocials recalled more cooperative tactics than
proselfs but only when they were held accountable. That is, when engaged in systematic
information processing, prosocially motivated people consider information consistent to
their cooperative goals even more, instead of processing different kinds of information
evenly to arrive at most logical and accurate conclusions.
Taken together, research on social motivation in negotiation contexts suggests
that social motivation, whether treated as an individual trait or contextual factor, biases
information processing such that individuals select information that aligns with their goal
in the given context. Prosocially motivated individuals remember cooperative
information more and perceive the other person to be worthy of cooperation and trust
more than their proself counterparts. They also do cooperate with their partner more than
individuals with proself motivation do. This tendency is even more boosted when
involvement or stakes are high in the given task or topic.
Study 2: Social Motivation and Credibility in Crowdfunding
The Role of Social Motivation in Crowdfunding
Building on the motivated information processing model and related findings as
discussed above, I expect that similar tendencies occur in backers’ contribution behaviors
and information processing in crowdfunding.
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Prosocial motivation, deriving from its definition, is likely to promote prosocial
behavior including contribution to a crowdfunding project. However, when it comes to
predicting actual contribution behavior, social motivation in general may not be
sufficient. Research on charity and donor behavior suggests that individual’s altruism in
general does not always lead to actual donation. Ranganathan and Henley (2008), for
example, found that attitude toward helping others by itself does not lead to donation
behavioral intention; rather, attitude toward charitable organization was found to be more
important in predicting donation intention. Supphellen and Nelson (2001) proposed a
typology of charity decision making. While they found that some people who would give
quite blindly when they have a disposable income, others evaluate the charitable
organization and/or the given cause carefully before making donation. Charity ads are
also more effective when the cause is more relevant to the respondent (Lafferty, 1996). In
addition, drawing on the motivated information processing research that found an
interplay of social motivation and epistemic motivation (de Dreu et al., 2006), one can
expect that individuals with prosocial motivation will actually engage in a prosocial
behavior when they are highly involved in the issue at hand. In the context of
crowdfunding, related literature and findings from Study 1 suggest that prosocially
motivated backers are not likely to make blind decisions, but back what they care about.
As shown in Study 1, backers’ prosocial contribution is very much issue-specific such as
supporting an indie game community or a live musician. That is, they show great interest
and willingness to understand and cooperate toward creators in the community they
strongly identify with or care about. Thus, I hypothesize the relationship between social
motivation and contribution as the following:
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H1: Social motivation and involvement with project topic will interact in
affecting backers’ contribution such that prosocial motivation will positively
affect contribution only when involvement is high.
Drawing on the motivated information processing model, one can expect that
backers’ social motivation affects the ways in which they selectively process information
about creators and their projects. Especially in the current crowdfunding platform, which
provides backers with a lot of information about projects and creators, backers’
motivation may direct their strategies to choose which information to focus and process
deeper. As shown in Study 1, individuals join crowdfunding for various goals ranging
from obtaining a niche project to supporting the creator, cause, or community. Different
goals may evoke different strategies to search information so that information helps
achieve the goals. For instance, backers with prosocial motivation, that is, those who are
driven to help creators realize their ideas and causes and make a bigger impact by
funding may focus on information about the creators, their fundraising goal, and values
of the project that benefit widely. On the other hand, proself backers who are primarily
driven to obtain an item they are interested in may choose to process information related
to the given project, especially functional details, and how practical and attractive they
are to the backers themselves. Thus, the following set of hypotheses are proposed:
H2: Backers with prosocial motivation will recall more about (a) creator-related
information, (b) funding goal, and (c) prosocial value of the project than backers
with proself motivation.
H3: Backers with proself motivation will recall more about (a) project-related
information, (b) functional details of the project, and (c) practical and hedonic
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values of the project than backers with prosocial motivation.
Social motivation not only affects individuals’ selection of information to process
but can also color their perception of the target such as credibility perceptions. As found
in the motivated information processing literature, individuals with prosocial motivation
tend to trust the counterpart more than those with proself motivation because prosocials
tend to “project greater cooperative intentions toward others” (de Dreu & van Lange,
1995, p. 1180). In the context of crowdfunding, prosocially motivated backers are likely
to see the creator more worthy of trust and cooperation than proself backers are. In
addition, given that prosocials make more favorable judgments about others (de Dreu &
van Lange, 1995), backers with prosocial motivation may also color the creators’ ability
higher than it really is, thereby rating the creators’ expertise higher than proself backers
would do. de Dreu and van Lange (1995) also found that prosocials see the other more
fair and considerate than proself individuals do, giving the other the benefit of the doubt.
Similarly, in crowdfunding contexts, prosocially motivated backers may judge the
intention of creators for fundraising to be more fair and less self-centered by projecting
their prosocial intention, than proself backers do as prosocial backers would be more
focused on what they can gain from contributing to the given project. Thus, I expect the
following outcome:
H4: Backers with prosocial motivation will perceive the project creator more
credible, that is, (a) trustworthy, (b) expert, and (c) caring, than backers with proself
motivation.
Cues of Credibility in Crowdfunding
So far, the discussion has focused on how information about projects and project
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creators in crowdfunding is selectively processed depending on backer’s social
motivation. In addition, I proposed that their credibility evaluation and contribution
decision are shaped by social motivation. While social motivation bounds a backer’s
information searching context in general, it is important to identify the array of specific
cues on the interface from which backers glean information from. In online credibility
evaluation, individuals face a variety of cues that can influence trigger credibility
judgments. Sundar (2008) argues that digital media technologies have made an
abundance of cues available. Being a “cognitive miser,” individuals use these cues as
judgment heuristics, by which they efficiently deal with information overload. To
categorize these cues based on their structural and design features, he proposed the
MAIN model where cues are grouped into modality (M), agency (A), interactivity (I),
and navigability (N) affordances. Among these, agency cues are closely tied with source
credibility. For example, information systems like recommendation system, reputation
system, and collaborative filtering trigger a “bandwagon heuristic” as they show what
others think or social proof (Sundar et al., 2008).
A crowdfunding site affords a number of structural features that serve as cues for
credibility. For example, creators can construct profiles where they can post their bio,
picture, Facebook, and links to personal websites. A creator’s project page contains
information such as a video and narrative description of the project, which serve to signal
the creator’s character, project-related expertise, and motives for raising money. In order
to identify and examine the cues in crowdfunding that influence credibility judgments, I
will refer to theories about cues and signals, and findings from Study 1.
Signaling theory (Donath, 2007a) offers insight into which cues are more likely to
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be perceived reliable, thus more heavily influencing the inference about a target
attribute. Signals are observable attributes of a person or a thing that are given out to
indicate a certain quality of the person or thing. Thus, signals that are more closely
connected with the quality that the signals denote are considered to be more reliable than
others. Based on such relationship between signals and qualities, Donath (2007a)
classified signals into two types—assessment and conventional signals. Assessment
signals refer to signals that one cannot produce without possessing the indicated quality.
Thus, the costs to fake signals are high for assessment signals. Since the display of
assessment signals directly communicates the possession of the given quality, assessment
signals are inherently reliable. Conventional signals, on the other hand, are arbitrarily
connected to the indicated qualities through conventions such as wearing a Harvard
sweatshirt. Conventional signals are subject to alteration and manipulation by the signaler
and are not inherently reliable.
Interviews with crowdfunding users in Study 1 suggest that creator profiles, a type
of conventional signals, are largely ignored by both creators and backers. Instead, a video
describing the project was one of the most important features in which both parties invest
their time and energy. Prior research on crowdfunding also identified having a video as
an important key to successful funding (K. Chen, Jones, Kim, & Schlamp; Kuppuswamy
& Bayus, 2013; Mollick, 2014). Projects with a video—regardless of its quality and
whether it is watched or not—can be considered a type of assessment signal for project
quality. Simply having a video, as opposed to not having a video, tells backers that the
creator possesses the ability to produce an audiovisual content. Even if a project video is
created by someone else such as a professional filmmaker hired by the creator, it may still
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indicate the creator’s resourcefulness. In addition, having a video can also indicate the
creator’s commitment to the project showing their effort and preparedness for the project.
The perceived likelihood of creators’ completing the project may be heightened when
creators show some evidence of their commitment, which can be signaled by showing a
video. Thus, the following hypothesis is proposed:
H5: Crowdfunding project creators who post a video for the project will be
perceived more expert and trustworthy than those who do not post a video.
In addition, following the motivated information processing model, the video effect
will be greater when backers are prosocially motivated as they more favorably respond to
information that indicates worthiness of cooperation with the creator.
H6: Social motivation will moderate the positive effect of video such that a greater
effect will be observed for backers with prosocial motivation than backers with
proself motivation.
Another prominent cue in crowdfunding, which may affect creator’s perceived
credibility is the number of people who have already backed the creator’s project. It is a
type of incidental aggregate user representation (Walther & Jang, 2012). The number of
backers indicates social proof (Cialdini, 2001), which provides potential backers with a
shortcut for information searching and value assessment. Also known as informational
social influence (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955), other’s prior contribution can serve as
information that reduces uncertainty about the situation, thereby promoting trust.
Literature on social influence also helps us understand the role of size of the “herd”
in creating social influence. Latané (1981)’s social impact theory, for example, lays out
three factors that determine the amount of social impact: (a) the strength or intensity of a
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given source as perceived by the target, (b) the immediacy between the source and the
target, and (c) the number of sources present. According to this theory, the amount of
social impact grows as the total number of sources increases, but in proportion to some
root (mostly square root) of the total number of sources; as a result, the first source has
the largest impact and each additional source produces less impact than the previous
source. Given that the theory was developed pre-internet, it is unclear as to which point
this leveling will occur at, however.
Empirical studies, particularly conducted on the context of online consumer
reviews and ratings, suggest that the volume of social opinions affects attitudes and
behavior although the pattern is not consistent. Duan, Gu, and Whinston (2008) found
that the number of reviews for movies was significantly associated with sales. Ye, Law,
Gu, and Chen (2011) also found a positive association between the number of reviews for
a hotel and the number of bookings for the hotel. On the other hand, Moe and Trusov
(2011) found that ratings of beauty products affect sales through valence but not volume.
Similarly, in their research on the relation between online discussion and TV ratings,
Godes and Mayzlin (2004) found no significant effect of volume of discussions on
ratings. M. Chen et al. (2010) also found no significant effect of number of reviews on
the intention to purchase books. Flanagin et al. (2011) asked participants to evaluate
product quality while varying average product ratings and number of reviews. Results
revealed that people attend to the average product ratings but not to the number of
reviews; evaluations of product quality did not differ when the number of reviews was 4
versus 1002.
It is important to note that in crowdfunding, the number of backers represents the
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size of support, that is, “positive” reaction rather than just any opinion. Thus, drawing on
social influence theories and qualifying empirical findings, I expect that when there are
many people who have already contributed to a project, a backer will perceive the creator
to be worthy of trust or taking the risk, compared to when there are few other backers.
H7: The number of backers who have already contributed to a crowdfunding
project will positively affect perceived trustworthiness of the project creator.
In addition, this effect of social proof will be enhanced by social motivation as
prosocial backers may use the number of backers as additional basis for trusting the
creator.
H8: Social motivation will moderate the positive effect of the number of backers
such that a greater effect will be observed for backers with prosocial motivation
than backers with proself motivation.
Finally, many crowdfunding platforms also provide statistics about the creator’s
past activities such as their prior contributions to others’ crowdfunding projects. A
creator’s contribution history can indicate the creator’s regard for others in the
community, thus affecting perceived goodwill. This cue also suggests that the creator is a
good, committed citizen in the community, being involved in the idea of crowdfunding
beyond his or her own project. Thus, those who have previously contributed to many
other projects are likely to be perceived less self-centered and more caring of others.
Prior research also found the number of projects backed by the creator to be an important
predictor of funding success in Kickstarter especially on the first day of funding,
suggesting a positive impression the number of contributions by creator may have on the
creator (K. Chen et al.).
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H9: The number of contributions by a project creator will positively affect the
creator’s perceived goodwill.
Again, the information about the creator’s prior contributions will be more likely to
be captured by prosocial backers than proself backers, affecting their judgment of
goodwill.
H10: Social motivation will moderate the positive effect of the number of
contributions by a project creator such that a greater effect will be observed for
backers with prosocial motivation than backers with proself motivation.
Method
Research Design
To test the proposed hypotheses, a series of experiments was conducted.
Experiment 1 manipulated backer’s social motivation (i.e., prosocial and proself) to test
H1 through H4 which hypothesize the role of social motivation by crowdfunding backers
in differential information recall, credibility evaluation, and contribution behavior.
Experiment 2 additionally manipulated the presence of video on the project page,
resulting in 2 (prosocial vs proself) x 2 (video vs no video) design, to test the direct effect
of video and its interaction with social motivation on credibility evaluation (H5 and H6).
Similarly, Experiment 3 took the same design as Experiment 2 except that it manipulated
the number of backers (high vs low number of backers, plus no number as control
condition) on the project page to investigate H7 and H8. Finally, the design of
Experiment 4 was also the same as Experiment 2 except that it varied the number of
contributions by the creator (high vs low number of contributions by the creator, plus no
number as control condition) to address H9 and H10. The total sample was comprised of
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341 participants.
Sampling and Recruitment
Participants were recruited using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online
platform that crowd sources tasks—usually small, simple tasks—to a number of users,
called Turkers. In MTurk, a requester creates a Human Intelligence Task (HIT) that can
be done online, asks Turkers to complete it, and pays to those who have completed the
task in a satisfactory manner. MTurk has increasingly been used as a tool for web-based
data collection such as for survey, experiments, and content analysis (Buhrmester,
Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). Buhrmester, Kwang, and Gosling (2011) found that samples
from MTurk were similar in gender composition to the standard Internet samples and
more diverse in ethnicity and age than the Internet samples and typical American college
samples.
For this research, I created a HIT on MTurk with a blurb about the experimental
task (see Appendix B for recruitment ad). Once completed, participants were given a
unique confirmation code, which they entered on MTurk to receive payment upon my
approval. A more detailed, step-by-step instruction for the task is described in the
procedure section below.
Stimulus
A fictitious crowdfunding website was developed specifically for this experiment
in order to avoid existing perceptions associated with the real brand from carrying over to
the experiment and to achieve greater experimental control. Experiments based on
simulated shopping environments are subject to artificiality of the setting and
participants’ lack of familiarity with the site features compared to existing sites. To
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address these issues, three steps were taken. First, this fictitious site was designed by a
professional web designer who specializes in e-commerce, and care was given to creating
the interface and design so that participants can have as much “real-world feel” as
possible to believe that such website might exist beyond the experimental setting.
Second, common features in existing crowdfunding sites were systematically examined
and included in the site to enhance familiarity. Third, a pilot test was conducted to ensure
that users indeed perceive the site to be familiar, professional, trustworthy, and attractive.
Details of this procedure are discussed below.
Site design. Design elements of the fictitious site include brand name, color
themes, typography, and structure of the site (e.g., project page, creator bio page,
selection page, transaction page). To avoid bias pertaining to brand recognition, a
recognized brand name was not used. Instead, the site was called “Small Society” with a
short subtitle “crowdfunding for everything” underneath the site name to highlight the
purpose of the site. This brand name is a type of semi-descriptive or associative brand
names, which effectively communicate functions, features, or purposes of the product or
service without being too obvious and descriptive (Fioroni & Titterton, 2009).
Other design elements such as color themes and typography were determined
through brainstorming with the professional web designer and my own research. There
were two criteria under consideration for deciding color themes and typography. First, the
site should not evoke a particular existing crowdfunding service such as Kickstarter or
Indiegogo. Second, though unknown, the site should still be perceived professional and
reliable enough to consider proceeding with further activities including searching,
navigating, and making transactions. In consideration of color themes, shades of blue
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were chosen because the color is known to create the sense of trust and security
(Kissmetrics, n.d.) and the feelings of calm, professionalism and reliability (Chapman,
2010, January 28), all of which are important qualities to communicate in online
transaction services. As for typography, the font Helvetica was used because it is
readable and commonly used in many websites.
To determine the structure of the site, several exemplar sites were examined and
their features were “averaged.” From popular lists of “top crowdfunding sites” posted by
news media and blogs, a total of 14 crowdfunding sites that repeatedly made these lists
were identified: Kickstarter, Indiegogo, RocketHub, GoFundMe, Razoo, Crowdrise,
fundly, Pledgemusic, Sellaband, Appbackr, Crowdfunder, Kiva, Donorschoose, and
Peerbackers. Among these, I excluded specialized crowdfunding sites such as
Pledgemusic (music), Sellaband (music), Appbackr (application), Crowdfunder (equity),
Kiva (micro lending), Donorschoose (education), and Peerbackers (small business). Table
3 shows a comparison of the seven sites in terms of primary focus, popularity, funding
policy, project-related features, project-related statistics, and creator-related features.
In summary, a typical crowdfunding site is organized as follows:
(1) Project page: Each launched project is given a unique URL based on the
project title. The project page is typically divided into two columns. On the left column is
there a space for a video while some projects opt out of the video feature and replace it
with a picture instead. Text descriptions that follow the video are often meshed with
photos and additional videos. The right column in most project pages shows statistics
related to the project (e.g., number of updates, funders, comments and amount of fund
raised against goal) and information about creator (e.g., bio, Facebook friends, number of
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projects the creator has created and funded). A button that allows users to “fund this
project” is given along with various types of rewards to choose from.
(2) Creator bio page: The structure of a creator bio page varies across sites, but
they typically include a picture, a text description, and information on past activities such
as number of projects the creator has created to date, number of other projects that the
creator has funded.
(3) Transaction page: Once a user decides to fund a project, a transaction page
appears. A user can enter the amount of money to fund and optionally select a single
reward category that is eligible to receive per the amount of money they have selected.
The transaction page also includes a disclaimer about the site’s zero liability of project
completion. For users who hit the “proceed” button, the payment page that requests credit
card information shows up, followed by a thank you message once the transaction is
completed and confirmed. Some sites also enable the funder to “share” the funded project
via social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
Based on these features commonly observed in the seven exemplar crowdfunding
sites, a template for each of the three pages above was created. Using the templates,
pages for the Small Society website were developed (see Figures 1-6).
To ensure that the site designed for the stimulus actually address what the study
intends to look for, a pilot study (N = 15, a separate sample from main studies) was
conducted using an online questionnaire developed via Qualtrics. After visiting the Small
Society website, respondents were asked to rate their perceived reliability
(undependable—undependable, unreliable—reliable, not secure—secure) on a 7-point
bipolar scale (Lee, Rao, Nass, Forssell, & John, 2012). The Small Society website was
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perceived dependable (M = 5.13, SD = 1.46), reliable (M = 5.00, SD = 1.46), and secure
(M = 4.87, SD = 1.30). Cronbach’s alpha for the website perceived reliability scale was
.98. They also evaluated their experience with the website to be positive (M = 5.40, SD =
1.06) and likable (M = 5.53, SD = .990) on a 7-point bipolar scale.
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Table 3
Comparison of Website Features Across Crowdfunding Services

Kickstarter Indiegogo RocketHub GoFundMe Razoo Crowdrise fundly
General Focus
Creative
projects
Everything Everything Personal Causes Causes &
Personal
Everything

Traffic
Ranking
1

320 822 22429 479 20904 5445 8193

Funding
policy
All or nothing Flexible Keep what
you raise
Keep what
you raise
Keep what
you raise
Keep what
you raise
Keep what
you raise
Project Bio Video x x x x
Picture x x x x x x x

Comment/Con
versation x x x x x x x
Rewards x x x
Project Stats Funding goal x x x x x x x
Money raised x x x x x x x

Number of
funders x x x x x x
Time left x x x x x

Funders
shown x x x x x x
Shares x x x x x x x
Updates x x
Creator Bio Bio x x x x x
Team x x x x

Facebook
connected x x x x
Project history x x x x x x

Contribution
history x x x x
(Note 1. Alexa traffic ranking based on the US as of June 2014)
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Figure 1. “Average” project page.

Figure 2. Project page for the Small Society website (stimulus).

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Figure 3. “Average” creator bio page.

Figure 4. Creator bio page for the Small Society website (stimulus).

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Figure 5. “Average” transaction page.

Figure 6. Transaction page for the Small Society website (stimulus).

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Stimulus materials. The stimulus website consisted of three pages: project page,
creator bio page, and transaction page. All conditions included an identical project in the
category of technology—an existing but expired project on Kickstarter
(https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joylabs/makey-makey-an-invention-kit-for-
everyone) called Makey Makey (shown in Figure 7). Makey Makey is an invention kit
that turns an ordinary object into a computer keyboard, touchpad or mouse. For example,
by connecting a piano application with bananas using Makey Makey, one can use
bananas as an actual keyboard instead of the keyboard on the computer. One may also
draw a joystick on a piece of paper, connect the paper joystick to a video game, and then
play the game with the paper joystick. It is designed for everyone including artists, kids,
educators, designers, engineers, makers, and so on. This project was created by two
graduate students at MIT Media Lab and was successfully funded in June, 2012,
collecting over $500,000 from more than ten thousand backers. I obtained permission to
use content of this project campaign from the creator directly.

Figure 7. Screenshot of the Kickstarter campaign for Makey Makey.

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In selecting this existing DIY electronics kit from a successful crowdfunding
campaign for this study, three factors were considered. First, the project should offer a
type of search goods (e.g., computers, electronics, furniture, hardware) rather than
experience goods (e.g., music, film, automobile). Nelson (1970) argues that goods differ
by the degree to which consumers must search prior to purchase or experience by
purchase in order to evaluate the goods. Search goods demand a priori investigation of
the good by acquiring information about the make, seller, product as well as feedback
from other consumers whereas experience goods, with their rather idiosyncratic nature,
may not necessarily require such inspection prior to purchase.
Second, crowdfunding projects related to technology are appropriate for this study
because they call for both proself and prosocial goals from funders. As found in Study 1
as well as other research (e.g., Gerber et al., 2012), funders seek rewards, often tangible
ones, and consider a crowdfunding site a pre-purchase market, representing more of a
commercial experience. On the other hand, technology funders do intend to help creators
bring their innovative ideas and values (Gerber et al., 2012), showing their prosocial
motivation.
Finally, participants should be interested in the product so that they would be
motivated to process information in the stimulus. The idea of turning everyday objects
into a keyboard, touchpad, or mouse is creative and interesting, which is animated in a
fast-paced video that puts together short, fun and playful footages of the two creators
using the kit. In addition, although there are many niche, one-of-a-kind yet inaccessible
crowdfunding projects in technology, Makey Makey deliberately targets and is accessible
to a wide range of audience including artists and educators. The pilot test ensured that
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participants liked the Makey Makey project (M = 5.60, SD = 1.84) on a 7-point scale (1 =
extreme dislike, 7 = extreme like) and gave an average of 3.73 star ratings (SD = 1.16).
All versions of the Small Society site featured Makey Makey, keeping the
following elements identical across the treatment conditions: project title, location,
project description (text), creator bio (text and image), reward description (text), funding
goal and time left. For project title (i.e., “Makey Makey; An Invention Kit for
Everyone”), creator bio, funding goal ($25,000), the original content was used. Location
was set to Cambridge, MA, to match the project creators’ school affiliation (MIT). For
project description, the original content was shortened in order to keep the information
load manageable. In addition, some words were varied across conditions for manipulating
social motivation (detailed later). The amount of time left until the funding period ends
was set to a midpoint of the funding period, specifically 20 days out of the 40-day
funding period. These numbers were based on the average duration for technology
projects—40.8 days, obtained from data of 45,815 Kickstarter projects as of June, 2012,
made publicly available by appsblogger (http://www.appsblogger.com/kickstarter-
infographic/). Using data from the actual crowdfunding site allows for constructing a
meaningful and realistic stimulus.
Manipulation
Social motivation. To prime proself and prosocial motivation, I used two
methods: (a) ask participants to recall the latest episode of a prosocial or proself
spending; and (b) manipulate content and features on the stimulus site. First, prior to their
visit to the Small Society website, they were asked to recall the last time they spent
money on a person or on an organization in need of their help (prosocial) or the last time
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they purchase something meaningful for themselves (proself) (Aknin, Dunn, Whilans, &
Grant, 2013). Then, when they visit the website, three elements in the website interface
were different depending on which condition they were assigned to (see Figure 8). First,
the language related to funding in project description was varied such that in the prosocial
condition, participants were asked to “contribute” to help the creators manufacture a large
batch of kits at a discounted rate with an “option” of selecting a gift. On the other hand,
participants in the proself condition were led to believe that the purpose of the featured
crowdfunding project was to get pre-orders for Makey Makey at least in the amount of
$25,000 (the funding goal) so that the creators can manufacture a large batch of kits at a
discounted rate. Second, in the prosocial condition, participants must hit the button
labeled “Contribute to this project” to proceed to the transaction page whereas those in
the proself condition saw the button “Pre-order this product”. Finally, reward options
were labeled as “gift options” for the prosocial condition and “pre-order options” for the
proself condition.
Video. The cue of video was manipulated by showing a video or not showing a
video while showing a still image instead. The original video and one of original still
images was used.
Number of backers. Number of backers varied by showing high number of
backers or low number of backers. The control condition did not show a number at all.
The high and low numbers were determined from 75% and 25% percentiles in the
number of backers for 198 technology projects with a funding goal of $25,000 or higher
in the aforementioned dataset. The high number was set to 287 (75% percentile) and the
low number was set to 10 (25% percentile). The amount of funding raised so far, though
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not an independent variable of interest, was varied as the number of funders changed.
Specifically, below the high number of backers, “Raised $29,869 (120%) of $25,000
Goal” was presented. For the low number of backers, “Raised $611 (2%) of $25,000
Goal” was presented.
Number of contributions by creator. The number of contributions by creator
was varied by having a high or low number of other projects backed by the creator. The
control condition did not show a number at all. Since the aforementioned dataset did not
include information about number of projects contributed by the creator, I collected data
about all projects launched on Kickstarter on July 17, 2014 across top seven genres (i.e.,
games, technology, film, design, music, publishing, food, art) (N = 247). The average
number of projects contributed by the creator in this dataset was .60 with the median of
zero and the highest number of 12 for technology projects (n = 43). The high number of
contributions was set to 12 and the low number was set to zero. While the number 12
seems to be an extreme outlier in this particular sample, it was less extreme when
considering projects of all seven genres (within top 2%).
Procedure
Participants were asked to perform three tasks as part of the study. Task 1
consisted of providing informed consent, reading instructions about the next task. Task 2
involved visiting the Small Society website, specifically the project page for Makey
Makey, and making a decision to contribute to [pre-order] the project [product] or not.
Task 3 was the post-test questionnaire.
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Figure 8. Prosocial (top) and proself (bottom) versions of the project page.

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Task 1. As mentioned above, participants were invited to this study from MTurk.
Once they accept the HIT (i.e., this study) on MTurk, they were invited to an online
survey developed using Qualtrics. Participants were asked to read a study information
sheet and to decide to participate in the study. At the end of Task 1, participants were
randomly assigned to one of experimental conditions.
Task 2. Participants were asked to recall the last episode of a prosocial or proself
spending depending on their social motivation condition, and to briefly write about it.
Then, they read a scenario that was created to give contextual information of the website
task. Participants were asked to imagine that a friend shared a link to the Makey Makey
project on a social media site they frequent (or a friend emailed the link if participants do
not currently use social media), encouraging them to also contribute [pre-order] to the
project [product]. This situation is inspired by Study 1, which found crowdfunding users
usually get exposed to a certain project via recommendations from friends connected via
social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Exposure through friends’ sharing is thus
considered a situation that crowdfunding users typically face. The scenario read:
Now, we would like you to imagine that on a typical weekday, you saw a posting
by one of your friends on a social media site that you frequent (If you currently do
not use social media, imagine that this friend sent you an email). This
posting/email featured a link with the following message:
“I just contributed to this really creative project about a DIY invention kit! This
new site is also doing a promo now, and if you visit the site using my link, you will
be awarded $25 site credit to spend on the site."
As above, participants were given $25 to spend on the site and were told that the
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money is virtual currency that only works within the site and that they would not be able
to cash out of the unused value. The rationale for giving free $25 is that making
contributions or purchases is directly related to the consumer’s income, especially in the
case of charity giving (Becker, 1974). Given the nature of project in the stimulus (i.e., not
a necessity item), it was important to give the participants “excess” money to spend. By
giving the fixed amount of money to spend, I could control the effect of one’s income or
budget on transaction decisions. The amount $25 was determined because it is the most
popular pledge amount by Kickstarter users (Kickstarter, n.d.-a).
At the end of the scenario, participants were given detailed instructions for what
to do when they visit the page recommended by the “friend.” They were asked to explore
information on the project page carefully and hit clickable features to obtain more
information. They were told that there would be two buttons on the project page by which
to indicate their decision once they are done with navigation: Contribute to this project or
I’m not interested in contributing to this project (Pre-order this product or I’m not
interested in pre-ordering this product). Clicking on the contribution [pre-order] button
would direct them to confirm their selection of contribution amount and gift option [pre-
order option] on the transaction page, which would also remind them about the $25 site
credit. Though they were given $25, they were allowed to choose a greater or lesser
amount of option at their discretion. After confirming their selection, they would proceed
to a Thank You page, where the link to redirect to the remaining survey was available.
Those who indicated non-interest were directly taken to the thank you page. Participants
were asked to complete the final questionnaire immediately after visiting the site and in
one sitting although they were free to discontinue at any time.
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After reading the scenario and instructions, participants were asked to click on the
URL that linked to one version of the Small Society site depending on their assigned
condition.
Task 3. After navigating and making a transaction decision, participants were
redirected to the Qualtrics survey, which included the posttest questionnaire.
Measures
The posttest questionnaire included measures of topic involvement, dependent
variables, and manipulation check items. Dependent variables were information recall,
source credibility, and contribution [pre-order]. Appendix C includes detailed
information about measures including a full list of scale items for each measure.
Topic involvement. Topic involvement was measured by asking participants to
assess the degree to which the topics (e.g., DIY electronics, science education, learning
tools, open source, hacker and maker culture) related to the project[product] were
relevant, interesting, enjoyable, important, means a lot to them, and of no concern to
them (reverse-coded) on a seven-point scale (Flanagin & Metzger, 2003; Novak,
Hoffman, & Yung, 2000). Cronbach’s alpha was .90 and the mean value of six items
served as the measure of topic involvement.
Information recall. To measure information recall, a free recall question was
used, “Please write down everything you asked participants to write down everything you
can remember about the Makey Makey project.” To prevent participants from being
motivated to go back to the project page, the question was accompanied by a note that it
is completely OK if they do not remember a lot of details. Open-ended answers collected
for information recall were coded as follows.
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First, each piece of information recalled was categorized by the subject of
information: project-related and creator-related. Creator-related information was coded
for the presence of creator affiliation. Project-related information was coded for the
presence of functional details, prosocial, hedonic, and practical values of the project
mentioned by the participant. Functional details refer to descriptions of how Makey
Makey works. Prosocial values were considered present when participants mentioned that
Makey Makey has low barrier, useful for kids, good for science education, etc. Hedonic
values were considered present when interest in the product and emphasis of fun, and
enjoyableness of the project were noted. Describing Makey Makey as useful and worth
the money was coded as a practical value. For all codes, absence was coded as zero and
presence was coded as 1.
Creator credibility. Creator credibility was measured by a modified version of
source credibility scale by McCroskey and Teven (1999). This scale is designed to
measure the three dimensions of source credibility: expertise, trustworthiness and
goodwill. From the original scale that consists of 18 items (six items each for three
dimensions), I chose four items from each dimension, having 12 items in total based on
their relevance to the context of this study. Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .91 for
expertise, .91 for trustworthiness, and .78 for goodwill. Three mean values were used to
represent one’s perceptions of expertise, trustworthiness, and goodwill of the creator.
Contribution. First, participants were asked as to whether they contributed
[placed a pre-order] on the Small Society site by a yes/no question. Second, they were
asked to report the gift [pre-order] option they selected if they had said yes in the above
question. An open-ended question was followed, asking them to describe their reasons for
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contribution [pre-order] or non-contribution [not placing a pre-order].
Besides measures of the dependent variables, the following variables were
measured in the posttest questionnaire.
Information credibility. Credibility of information about the project was
measured using message credibility scale (Flanagin & Metzger, 2007). Participants rated
information credibility in terms of believability, accuracy, trustworthiness, bias, and
completeness on a seven-point bipolar scale. Bias scores were reverse-coded. Cronbach’s
alpha was .85.
Perceived website credibility. Perceived website credibility was measured by
asking participants to rate their perceived reliability (undependable—undependable,
unreliable—reliable, not secure—secure) on a 7-point bipolar scale (Lee et al., 2012).
Cronbach’s alpha for the website perceived reliability scale was .94.
Perceived project quality. Perceived project quality was measured by asking
participants to rate the project using star ratings where one star means the lowest quality
and five stars mean the highest quality.
Attitude toward creator and project. Attitude toward creator was measured by
one question that asked participants to rate their general feelings about the creators on a
seven-point scale (1 = extreme dislike, 7 = extreme like). Attitude toward project was
measured by the same question except for the target of evaluation being the project.
Social value orientation. Social value orientation was measured by the social
value orientation decomposed game developed by van Lange et al. (1997). This task asks
participants to imagine that they and “Other” who they do not know nor will not
knowingly meet in the future have been paired to make choices to allocate virtual points.
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The points are supposed to have value such that the more points they receive, the better
for them. The task presents nine situations, each of which has three options from which to
choose one. Each of the three options represents prosocial, individualistic, or competitive
choice. For example, consider the following situation:
Option A: You get 500; Other gets 100
Option B: You get 500; Other gets 500
Option C: You get 550; Other gets 300
Option A is a competitive choice; option B is a prosocial choice; option C is an
individualistic choice. Participants were asked to choose one option in nine situations
that are variant sof the above example and classified as prosocial, individualistic, or
competitive when they make six or more consistent choices (van Lange et al., 1997).
Crowdfunding experience. Crowdfunding experience measured with three items
adapted from Flanagin and Metzger (2007). Participants were asked to rate on a seven-
point scale how often they use crowdfunding (1 = never, 2 = less than once a month, 3 =
once a month, 4 = 2-3 times a month, 5 = once a week, 6 = 2-3 times a week, 7 = daily).
Then, they rated their experience with and level of expertise of crowdfunding on a five-
point scale (1 = none at all, 2 = a little, 3 = a moderate amount, 4 = a lot, 5 = a great
deal). Cronbach’s alpha was .77.
Familiarity with Makey Makey. Since this study used an existing crowdfunding
project as the experimental stimulus, it was important to whether and how participants
had been familiar with the project before they took part in the study. First, the
participants were asked whether they had heard of the Makey Makey project prior to their
study participation. For those who answered yes to this question, a follow-up question
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was presented, asking whether they had funded this project when it was in progress on
Kickstarter.
Demographic variables. For demographics, information about age, sex, level of
education, race or ethnicity, geographic location was collected. To address the sensitivity
of asking an income question that may be particularly relevant to the study population,
proxy measures were used. I asked how much money they spent in the past 30 days for
shopping online, utility bills (filler question), and giving to charity or people in need.
Results
Experiment 1
The sample for Experiment 1 included 42 people recruited from MTurk (23 or
54.8% female). They were 34.86 years old on average (SD = 10.95), ranging from 19 to
61 years old.
Manipulation check. To manipulate social motivation, participants were primed
to recall the last episode of prosocial [proself] spending; in addition, those in the
prosocial condition saw the mock website that led them to believe that they were
contributing money to a crowdfunding project with an option to receive a gift whereas
those in the proself condition saw the version of the mock website that described their
transaction to be pre-ordering a product. To check whether these methods of social
motivation priming worked, participants were asked to indicate their agreement with the
following five statements regarding their criteria for transaction decision making: (1) I
considered how my contribution [pre-order] would benefit the creators; (2) I considered
how my contribution [pre-order] would help other people benefit from this project
[product]; (3) I considered how much I wanted to try out the kit on my own; (4) I
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considered how much I enjoyed this project [product] idea; and (5) I considered how my
contribution [pre-order] would make a positive impact on a community of creative
entrepreneurs and innovators. Items 1, 2, and 5 were created to assess how much one was
prosocially driven when deciding to contribute or not, and items 4 and 5 were used to
measure the degree to which proself motivation played a role in decision making. A
seven-point scale was used (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). Cronbach’s
alpha was .92 and .75 for the three-item prosocial scale and the two-item proself scale
respectively.
However, those who were assigned to the prosocial condition (M = 4.24, SD =
1.84) did not score higher on the prosocial scale than those who were assigned to the
proself condition (M = 4.13, SD = 1.74), t(40) = .201, p = .84. Similarly, there was no
significant difference in the proself consideration between prosocially motivated people
(M = 5.52, SD = 1.30) and their proself counterparts (M = 5.57, SD = 1.38), t(40) = -.12,
p = .91.
The above result suggests that participants’ tendency to make prosocial or proself
consideration during transaction decision making was not systematically affected by
recall of the last episode of prosocial or proself spending and the language variation in
website interface features. There was no clear evidence, however, that prosocial or
proself motivation was stable rather than induced. If it were a stable trait, participants’
prosocial or proself consideration would have been associated with their social value
orientation (van Lange et al., 1997). In the current sample, the distribution of the
participants’ social value orientation was skewed such that the sample included 23
prosocials, 13 individualists, one competitor; five people were not categorized for
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instability in their choices. Prosocials and individualists did not significantly differ in
their prosocial consideration in transaction decision making (measured by the mean score
of the above manipulation check items 1, 2, 5) nor in proself consideration in transaction
decision making (measured by the mean score of the above manipulation check items 3,
4). Comparing prosocials and competitors, however, was not possible due to the
extremely small number of competitors. Thus, for subsequent analyses, the measure of
prosocial consideration was used to represent prosocial motivation and the measure of
proself consideration was used to represent proself motivation. Although one’s prosocial
or proself consideration was not affected by priming or variation of website features, they
may reflect individuals’ differential goals that vary along social motivation given the
transaction context at hand, independently from their stable social value orientation.
Descriptive statistics. Table 4 summarizes descriptive statistics and bivariate
correlations for the independent and dependent variables. Of 42 participants, 17 decided
to contribute to the featured crowdfunding project, Makey Makey on the Small Society
site. The average amount of contribution was $25.29. Contribution was strongly
correlated with prosocial motivation (Pearson’s r = .75, p < .01) and topic involvement
(Pearson’s r = .53, p < .01).
Hypothesis testing. H1 proposed that social motivation and involvement with
project topic would interact in affecting backers’ contribution such that prosocial
motivation would positively affect contribution only when their topic involvement was
high. Regressions were run with prosocial motivation, topic involvement, and their
interaction term as the independent variables and each of contribution-related variables
(i.e., contribution on the site, amount of contribution) as the dependent variable. Table 5
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summarizes the regression results. The interaction term was significant, meaning that the
effect of prosocial motivation on contribution depends on topic involvement. Figure 9
shows the interaction pattern probed by picking a low and high level of each independent
variable by taking one standard deviation below and above the mean. As shown, backers
were significantly more likely to contribute to a crowdfunding project when they had
high prosocial motivation and high topic involvement.
The second column of Table 7 shows the regression model for the amount of
contribution as the dependent variable for those who actually decided to contribute on the
site (n = 16). The significant coefficient for prosocial motivation means that when topic
involvement is zero, one unit increase in prosocial motivation increases the estimated
amount of contribution by $32.21. The significant coefficient for topic involvement
means that when prosocial motivation is zero, one unit increase in topic involvement
increases the estimated amount of contribution by $28.52. However, because zero is
outside of the range of measurement of these variables, the interpretation of these
numbers becomes moot. Finally, the significant coefficient for the interaction term means
that the effect of each independent variable on the amount of contribution is conditional
to variation in the other independent variable. This interaction is probed as shown in
Figure 10. Because those who contributed to the project were already involved in the
topics (M = 5.83, SD = .81, ranging from 4.33 to 7), I probed how prosocial motivation
affects the amount of contribution when topic involvement increases from neutral (4) to
high (7). The result shows that among those who contributed, as topic involvement
increases, the amount of contribution decreases for those with high prosocial motivation.
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On the other hand, for those with relatively low prosocial motivation, as topic
involvement increases, the amount of contribution increases.
This result is rather counterintuitive and must be treated with caution. In the
stimulus website, participants were given free $25 credit to spend and could get a full kit
of Makey Makey at $25. Higher levels of reward than $25 simply added more
accessories. Thus, prosocials with high topic involvement would be likely to focus on the
$25 reward, which can give them what they are interested in and let them help the
creator. On the other hand, prosocials with moderate topic involvement could have
decided to spend more money as they see their contribution more of donation to support
the creator rather than getting what they want, which may have resulted in their choice of
the highest contribution option.
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Table 4
Descriptive Statistics and Correlations of Variables for H1

1 2 3 4 5 Mean SD N
1. Contribution (1: Yes, 0:
No) 1 .40 .50 42
2. Contribution amount ($) . 1 25.29 8.00 17
3. Prosocial motivation .75
**
.30 1 4.18 1.77 42
4. Topic involvement .53
**
-.03 .49
**
1 5.00 1.30 42
5. Social motivation x
Topic involvement .80
**
.11 .92
**
.76
**
1 22.04 12.27 42

Note: ** p < .01, *** p < .001.

Table 5
Social Motivation and Topic Involvement on Contribution [Pre-Order]

!
Contribution Contribution Amount!
B SE B SE
(Constant) .35 .44 -140.65 45.86
Prosocial motivation -.13 .11 32.21
**
8.48
Topic involvement -.14 .09 28.52
**
8.46
Prosocial motivation
x Topic involvement .06
**
.02 -5.51
**
1.55
N 41 16
R
2
.66*** .54*

Note: * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001.
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Figure 9. Interaction of prosocial motivation and topic involvement on contribution.

Note: Low = M - 1SD, High = M + 1SD

Figure 10. Interaction of prosocial motivation and topic involvement on amount of
contribution (in US Dollars) among those who contributed.

0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
Low Prosocial High Prosocial
High Involvement
Low Involvement
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
4 5 6 7
Topic Involvement
Low Prosocial
High Prosocial
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H2 predicted social motivation would affect information recall such that those
prosocially motivated will recall more about creator-related information such as creator’s
name and affiliation; information about the creator’s funding goal; and prosocial values
of the project such as its benefits for science education and communities of artists and
engineers.
In addition, H3 predicted that backers with proself motivation would recall more
about project-related information such as functional details of the project, and practical
and hedonic values of the project. Bivariate correlations (see Table 6) showed that
contrary to H2, individuals with prosocial motivation recalled more hedonic values of the
project than those with proself motivation (Pearson’s r = .32, p = .04). Recall of the
funding goal was not significantly related to prosocial motivation; however, it was
negatively correlated with proself motivation (Pearson’s r = -.35, p = .02), meaning those
who were focused on evaluating how much they like the shown item on the project page
tended to recall less information about the project’s fundraising goal. This finding
indirectly supports H3. Finally, as predicted by H3, proself motivation was positively
correlated with recall of functional details of the project (Pearson’s r = .35, p = .02).
Overall, H2 was not supported and H3 was partially supported.
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Table 6
Descriptive Statistics and Correlations of Variables for H2 and H3
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Mean SD
1. Prosocial
motivation 1 4.18 1.77
2. Proself
motivation .24 1 5.55 1.33
3. Creator-related
information -.14 -.09 1 .12 .33
4. Project-related
information -.00 .23 -.09 1 .88 .33
5. Funding goal -.15 -.35* .23 -.23 1 .17 .38
6. Project functional
details .10 .35* .08 .58** -.14 1 .71 .46
7. Prosocial value .01 .17 .38* .19 -.07 .19 1 .2 .41
8. Practical value .02 .26 .26 .08 -.10 .15 -.12 1 .05 .22
9. Hedonic value .32* -.03 -.16 .16 -.01 .12 .14 -.10 .15 .36

Note: * p < .05, ** p < .01
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H4 predicted that backers with prosocial motivation would perceive the project
creator more credible than backers with proself motivation. To test this hypothesis,
regression was run with the two motivation variables as independent variables and each
of the three dimensions of source credibility. As shown in Table 7, prosocial motivation
was positively associated with creator’s expertise (B = .21, p = .02), trustworthiness (B =
.24, p = .03), and goodwill (B = .23, p = .01), controlling for proself motivation. That is,
those who considered prosocial values of their transaction tended to perceive the creator
to be more competent, more trustworthy, and less self-centered. Therefore, H4 was
supported.

Table 7
The Effects of Social Motivation on Creator Credibility

Expertise Trustworthiness Goodwill
B SE B SE B SE
(Constant) 3.85 .66 3.24 .81 3.52 .69
Prosocial motivation .21* .09 .24* .11 .23* .09
Proself motivation .16 .11 .18 .14 .06 .12
N 42 42 42
R
2
.21 .19 .18

Note: * p < .05, ** p < .01.
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Experiment 2
Experiment 2 manipulated social motivation and video to test H5 and H6. The
sample for Experiment 2 included 84 people recruited from MTurk (45 or 53.6% female).
They were 35.5 years old on average (SD = 12.63), ranging from 18 to 82 years old.
Manipulation check. To check whether the video got noticed and watched,
participants were asked to indicate their agreement on a seven-point scale with the
following two statements: (1) The product page included a video with a lot of detailed
information about the product; and (2) I understand how the Makey Makey kit works.
Those who were shown the video scored (M = 5.60, SD = 1.47) significantly higher on
item 1 than those who were only given the still image (M = 2.74, SD = 1.82), t(82) = -
7.91, p < .000. However, with regard to item 2, participants who were shown the video
did not report significantly higher understanding of the project than those who were only
shown the image.
As with Experiment 1, social motivation manipulation did not succeed, and I used
measures of prosocial consideration in transaction decision making to represent prosocial
motivation and measures of proself consideration to indicate proself motivation.
Hypothesis testing. H5 predicted that having a video for a crowdfunding project
would positively affect perceived expertise and trustworthiness of the project creator; H6
then proposed social motivation as a moderator for the above effect such that a greater
effect would be observed for backers with prosocial motivation. First, with perceived
expertise as the dependent variable, a hierarchical regression was run with prosocial
motivation and presence of video as independent variables in model 1 and added the
interaction term in model 2 (see Table 8). There was only a main effect of prosocial
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motivation such that those with high social motivation were more likely to perceive the
creator more expert than those with low social motivation (B = .25, p < .001 for Model 1,
B = .26, p < .01 for Model 2).
Similarly, with perceived trustworthiness as the dependent variable, a hierarchical
regression was run with prosocial motivation and presence of video as independent
variables in model 1 and added the interaction term in model 2 (see Table 8). There was
only a main effect of prosocial motivation such that those with high social motivation
were more likely to perceive the creator more trustworthy than those with low social
motivation (B = .25, p < .001 for Model 1, B = .23, p < .05 for Model 2). Therefore, H5
and H6 were not supported.
Experiment 3
Experiment 3 manipulated social motivation and the number of backers (i.e., high,
low, no backer information) to test H7 and H8. The sample for Experiment 3 included
128 people recruited from MTurk (81 or 63.3% female). They were 36.69 years old on
average (SD = 13.27), ranging from 18 to 69 years old.
Manipulation check. In experiment 3, the manipulation social motivation by
priming and interface features did induce changes in participants’ prosocial consideration
in transaction decision making; no significant effect was found for proself consideration.
That is, those who were asked to recall the last episode of prosocial spending and were
invited to the website that highlights contribution (vs pre-order) (M = 4.69, SD = 1.39)
were indeed more likely to consider prosocial values of their contribution in their
transaction decisions than those who recalled the last episode of proself spending and
were invited to the pre-order site (M = 3.50, SD = 1.66), t(126) = 4.374, p < .000.
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Table 8
Prosocial Motivation and Video on Creator Credibility (N = 82)

Expertise Trustworthiness
Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2
B SE B SE B SE B SE
(Constant) 4.60 .28 4.56 .36 3.96 .30 4.04 .39
Prosocial motivation .25
***
.06 .26
**
.09 .25
***
.07 .23
*
.09
Video -.01 .11 .03 .27 .11 .12 .03 .29
Prosocial motivation x
Video -.01 .06 .02 .07
R
2
.17 .17 .17 .17
R
2
change .00 .00
Note: * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001.
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To check the manipulation of the number of backers [pre-orders], the following
two statements were used with the same instruction above: (1) There are many
contributors [pre-orders] already; and (2) The project [product] has attracted considerable
attention from other people. These two items had a high reliability (Cronbach’s alpha =
.85), so the mean score was used. Those who were in the high number of backers
condition (M = 5.35, SD = 1.25) agreed with that the project received many contributions
and attention more strongly than those were shown the low number of backers (M =
4.13, SD = 1.25) and those who did not see the number of backers at all (M = 4.40, SD =
.95), F(2, 119) = 12.53, p < .000.
Hypothesis testing. H7 predicted that the number of backers who have already
contributed to a crowdfunding project would positively affect perceived trustworthiness
of the project creator. In addition, H8 proposed that social motivation would moderate the
above positive effect of the number of backers such that a greater effect would be
observed for prosocial backers than proself backers. A two-way ANOVA was conducted
with the social motivation condition (i.e., prosocial vs proself) and the number of backers
(i.e., high, low, no cue) as the independent variables and perceived trustworthiness as the
dependent variable. No significant effect was found for either social motivation or the
number of backers. H7 and H8 were not supported.
Experiment 4
Experiment 4 manipulated social motivation and the number of contributions by
creator (i.e., high, low, no contribution information) to test H9 and H10. The sample for
Experiment 3 included 123 people recruited from MTurk (70 or 56.9% female). They
were 34.22 years old on average (SD = 11.12), ranging from 19 to 69 years old.
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Manipulation check. In Experiment 4, the manipulation social motivation by
priming and interface features produced changes in participants’ prosocial consideration
in transaction decision making; no significant effect was found for proself consideration.
Specifically, those who were asked to recall the last episode of prosocial spending and
were invited to the website that highlights contribution (vs pre-order) (M = 4.65, SD =
1.57) were indeed more likely to consider prosocial values of their contribution in their
transaction decisions than those who recalled the last episode of proself spending and
were invited to the pre-order site (M = 3.70, SD = 1.74), t(121) = 3.158, p = .002.
To ensure manipulation of the number of contributions by creator, participants
were asked to indicate their agreement with the following two statements concerning the
project creator(s): (1) They have contributed to [pre-ordered) other creators' projects
[products] on the Small Society site; (2) They are concerned about the well-being
[success] of others. Variation of the number of contributions by creator, the independent
variable, did not produce significant differences for neither of the manipulation check
items. Thus, H9 and H10 were not supported.
Table 9 summarizes the results of hypothesis testing.
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Table 9
Summary of Hypotheses
Hypothesis Result
H1: Social motivation and involvement with project topic will
interact in affecting backers’ contribution such that prosocial
motivation will positively affect contribution only when
involvement is high.

Supported
H2: Backers with prosocial motivation will recall more about (a)
creator-related information, (b) funding goal, and (c) prosocial
value of the project than backers with proself motivation.

Not supported
H3: Backers with proself motivation will recall more about (a)
project-related information, (b) functional details of the project,
and (c) practical and hedonic values of the project than backers
with prosocial motivation.
Partially supported
H4: Backers with prosocial motivation will perceive the project
creator more credible, that is, (a) trustworthy, (b) expert, and (c)
caring, than backers with proself motivation.
Supported
H5: Crowdfunding project creators who post a video for the
project will be perceived more expert and trustworthy than those
who do not post a video.
Not supported
H6: Social motivation will moderate the positive effect of video
such that a greater effect will be observed for backers with
prosocial motivation than backers with proself motivation.
Not supported
H7: The number of backers who have already contributed to a
crowdfunding project will positively affect perceived
trustworthiness of the project creator.
Not supported
H8: Social motivation will moderate the positive effect of the
number of backers such that a greater effect will be observed for
backers with prosocial motivation than backers with proself
motivation.
Not supported
H9: The number of contributions by a project creator will
positively affect the creator’s perceived goodwill.
Not supported
H10: Social motivation will moderate the positive effect of the
number of contributions by a project creator such that a greater
effect will be observed for backers with prosocial motivation than
backers with proself motivation.
Not supported
!

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CHAPTER 5: General Discussion
The primary objective of this dissertation was to show how motivation,
particularly social motivation, plays a role in individuals’ credibility evaluation and
contribution decisions in crowdfunding. By showing the relationships between social
motivation, credibility and crowdfunding behavior, both theoretical and practical goals
were targeted. First, in light of the increased data about individual sources’ content,
connections, and activities, understanding how users process these data as cues to
determine source credibility is an important and timely matter. In dealing with
information overload in the current media environment, motivational factors arose as an
important boundary condition to consider; yet empirical research testing them was scant
to date. The current dissertation was conducted to address that very gap to understand
how motivation guides information processing for credibility evaluation in the current
information-rich media environment. Particularly, in acknowledging the increasing
sociality in online economic behavior, social motivation, such as prosocial or proself
motivation, was proposed as an important type of motivation that affects information
processing and behavior. As the study context, this dissertation focused on crowdfunding,
a popular online platform for individual entrepreneurs, creators, and fundraiser to request
for funding from a large collective of people. Crowdfunding was deemed suitable for the
present dissertation, as it requires backers to assess credibility of project creators to
reduce the risk involved in contribution while such judgment can be shaped by
individuals’ motivation for contribution being self-oriented or other-oriented. By
situating the study in the context of crowdfunding, this dissertation aimed to offer
practical knowledge of how crowdfunding users process information about creators and
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projects, which in turn affect their contribution decisions. To achieve these goals, in-
depth interviews with actual crowdfunding users (Study 1) and a series of follow-up
experiments (Study 2) were conducted to examine the relationships between social
motivation, credibility, and contribution in crowdfunding. This chapter discusses the
results of Study 1 and Study 2 in light of the previous literature on credibility and social
motivation, while highlighting their implications for our enhanced understanding of
online credibility evaluation and crowdfunding.
Credibility Research: Old and New
Drawing on the review of credibility literature from pre-internet to the current
digital media environment, Study 1 examined whether the theoretical dimensions of
credibility that were identified half a century ago still apply to now, and particularly how
they are manifested in the context of crowdfunding where developing trust is of great
importance for its users.
Study 1 shows that the validity of the theoretical constructs of source credibility
still holds at least in the context of crowdfunding. Project creators consciously applied
communication tactics to emphasize their expertise, authenticity, and intention to do good
beyond their own self-interest. Backers also employ various strategies and criteria for
judging project creators and their projects in which the credibility constructs manifest
themselves. One noteworthy finding was that creator’s goodwill seems to be an important
characteristic under consideration for crowdfunding backers. Goodwill was noted as the
“lost” dimension because its lack of unique contribution to overall credibility judgment
(McCroskey & Teven, 1999). The increasing sociality in online information environment,
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however, calls for reconsideration of the goodwill dimension as an important facet of
credibility.
However, Study 1 also found some intricacies of credibility evaluation in
crowdfunding, which may also generalize to the current media environment. First,
interview findings suggest that online credibility judgment, particularly in the context of
crowdfunding, starts with prior knowledge of or connection with information sources—
project creators. Information overload in the contemporary media environment
encourages users to selectively expose themselves to the type of sources they already like
or familiar with (Metzger et al., 2010). For example, a majority of participants in Study 1
were introduced to the idea of crowdfunding by friends, family, or colleagues. In
addition, when it comes to backing a project, they follow friends’ recommendation or
back projects created by someone they already know. In this way, individuals do not have
to engage in comprehensive, effortful investigation of sources; they can allocate their
attention to information that they need to examine. Credibility of project creators that
they decide to back or not is often established prior to exploring the project.
This finding in part echoes prior research that found the gap between people’s
actual credibility evaluation and their behavior in the lab (Eysenbach & Kohler, 2002;
Flanagin & Metzger, 2007). However, the lack of scrutiny, extensive research or analysis
about information and its sources, which sometimes evokes criticisms and concerns from
scholars and public, does not necessarily suggest that the individual shows no regard or
care for credibility. Social networking technologies have increased point-to-point
connectivity between individuals and made information sharing easier than before.
Betting on completely new, strange information sources, thus, may be rather unrealistic
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in the current media environment. Through the networked relationship between
information sources, it is likely that users now perceive sources they contact for the first
time more credible than before. A “friend of a friend” revealed through online social
network sites who would have otherwise been a stranger is likely to be more influential
than the same person presented with no visible information about connections.
Furthermore, credibility judgments online may not be purely perception with zero
history, since, as shown in Study 1, individuals know sources personally. As friends,
family, co-workers, or whoever connected through online networks increasingly play a
role of curators of new information, source credibility evaluation cannot be accurately
understood in isolation from individuals’ social embeddedness.
Study 1 also challenges researchers to be careful when considering interface cues
that can signal source credibility. Researchers tend to consider cues that theoretically
suggest credibility dimensions, and hypothesize them to have an effect on credibility
evaluation. The findings from Study 1 that many participants do not read profile pages
call for studying users’ real behaviors, thereby integrating theory and observation.
Users’ lack of attention to, or the lack of consideration of, interface cues is also
reflected in the findings of Study 2. In Study 2, manipulation by interface features did not
result in predicted outcomes. For instance, in Experiment 4, participants did not notice
the number of contributions by creator. In Experiment 2, the manipulation of video was
noticed by the participants, but did not lead to any changes in their perceptions of the
project nor the creator. Having a video also did not affect participants’ contribution,
which is contrasted by studies that analyzed actual data from crowdfunding sites
(Kuppuswamy & Bayus, 2013; Mollick, 2014). In addition, the number of backers, a cue
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of social proof, was not associated with any of the major variables measured in this study,
even if manipulation led to changes in people’s differing perceptions of popularity of the
project.
One possible explanation for these findings is that there was a lot of information
in the project page, possibly making the cues less prominent. As noted by Fogg (2003), a
cue must be noticed in the first place to be influential. With regard to the non-significant
effect of the number of backers, it is possible that rich information provided on the
project page reduced the need for social proof for participants. Social proof is likely to
play a role in decision making when there is greater uncertainty or when there is
motivation to behave normatively (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955). In the stimulus used in
Study 2, participants may not have had enough motivation to follow the herd because
they were able to obtain sufficient information from the project page, and normative
pressure is less likely to be prominent given the experimental nature of the situation.
Social Motivation, Credibility, and Crowdfunding
Another important finding from this dissertation is that social motivation is a
potential force that affects users’ information processing and contribution decisions in
crowdfunding. To make a case for this relationship, Study 1 was conducted to show that
backers enter crowdfunding with varying degrees of social motivation, which drive them
in different patterns of judging the creator and deciding to back the project or not.
Findings of Study 1 revealed nuanced insights into how social motivation affects
crowdfunding. So far, the literature has been mostly devoted to the potential of
crowdfunding as an alternative form of entrepreneurial financing (Mollick, 2014). On the
other hand, the idea that a crowd funds a creative idea or cause by someone they do not
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know is often viewed by outsiders as a noble and philanthropic practice. Study 1 suggests
that the truth may be somewhere in the middle.
First, people’s motivations and goals for participating in crowdfunding may differ
across different platforms that have different regulations and target audiences. For
example, cause-related projects are banned in Kickstarter, which pushes community
organizers and charity organizations to launch their projects somewhere else such as
Indiegogo. While Indiegogo has a wide variety of categories, project creators in
technology and design find themselves better off launching their projects in Kickstarter
for a larger network it draws to those areas. Such variation across crowdfunding services
makes it hard to characterize crowdfunding in a rigid, monolithic way. Therefore,
researchers must take it into consideration that choosing one crowdfunding platform to
study may not reveal a comprehensive picture of crowdfunding.
In addition, backers’ motivations vary in part across project categories. Different
project categories represent more than a variety of topics; they also vary by reward
characteristics and the degree to which prior product searching matters. When a project
promises a tangible reward that allows backers to fully experience the outcome of the
project, backers may focus on obtaining the goods more than other things. In this case,
the amount of contribution by backers will simply correspond to the value of the desired
product, and thus, one cannot assume that larger contribution indicates greater generosity.
On the other hand, just because one backs projects that offer tangible rewards does not
indicate that their motivation is purely self-centered. As shown in Study 1, backers show
empathy and understanding toward creators, and accept, or even appreciate, creator’s
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trials and errors. This may be especially the case when backers are prosocially oriented
and are deeply involved in the project idea.
The way social motivation affects information processing and contribution
decisions was more systematically examined through the series of experiments in Study
2. Drawing on the motivated information processing model, it was hypothesized that
prosocially motivated backers and proself backers would attend to different pieces of
information that align with their goals. Results showed that proself backers recalled more
functional details for the project, but less about the project creator’s fundraising goal.
That is, those who were motivated to make purchases for themselves with little regard for
its prosocial implications were more likely to focus on the target product but less on the
person who creates and distributes. This finding provides some evidence of motivated
information processing occurring in online contexts.
In addition, backers with high prosocial motivation rated the creator’s credibility
(i.e., trustworthiness, expertise, and goodwill) more highly than those with low prosocial
motivation did. That is, the same creator was judged more trustworthy, capable, and less
self-centered by highly prosocial backers than by lowly prosocial backers, supporting the
motivated information processing model. Proself motivation, however, did not affect
creator’s perceived credibility, suggesting proself motivation may not direct backers’
attention to the creator.
Contrary to prediction, however, individuals with high prosocial motivation
recalled more hedonic values than those with low prosocial motivation. Hedonic values
were measured by participants’ description of the project as being fun, enjoyable, and
interesting to themselves. This suggests that prosocial backers were concerned with their
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own gains as much as the creator’s. A plausible explanation for this finding is that
prosocial motivation generally enhanced positive affect, thus forming a favorable attitude
toward the project in addition to the creator. Prosocial motivation was in fact positively
correlated with perceived message credibility (r = .52, p < .000), project like (r = .66, p <
.000), project quality (r = .52, p < .000), and creator like (r = .40, p < .01). As such,
prosocial motivation had a globally positive impact on perceptions of the project and the
creator.
While prosocial motivation colors information about the project and the creator
more favorably, actual contribution in crowdfunding is found to be a joint outcome of
prosocial motivation and topic involvement. Contribution was significantly higher when
both prosocial motivation and topic involvement were high than in other conditions. As
expected from literature on charity giving and altruism, prosocially motivated individuals
did not blindly give their money. Instead, they seem to try to find some cues that suggest
prosocial value in the project that matters to them, and decide to give money or not. For
example, one participant who was assigned to the prosocial condition and ended up
deciding not to contribute wrote, “There was a video explaining how the program worked
but I only donate to causes that help people with illness and financial distress not kits like
this.” Another participant noted, “It seemed really interesting but completely unpractical.
I'd rather donate to kids with cancer than help a project make a piano out of bananas.”
Similar sentiment was found when a participant wrote, “I remember the site had nice
aesthetics and I remember thinking this would be cool for a kids science fair project but it
is not something that I would personally donate to.”
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A question may then be raised whether a prosocially motivated backer must be
knowledgeable of the project idea in order to contribute beyond their topic involvement.
An insight about this matter can be obtained from one interview participant, B_TechArt,
who said the following:
I should understand and appreciate its value. For genres that I don’t have good
knowledge of such as music, film, etc. I don’t understand their value. So, I should
be in the community who knows and understands the real value and uniqueness of
the product.

On the other hand, the data from experiments indicate that topic involvement was not
significantly associated with depth of their recall, measured by the number of unique
detail recalled about the project. In other words, one can feel connected with a certain
topic without processing information in details although the validity of recall questions as
a measure of depth of information processing is arguable. Given that none of the
participants in Experiment 1 knew about Makey Makey prior to the experiment, the
results of this study indicate that prospective backers can be involved with topics covered
by the given crowdfunding project without background knowledge or prior understanding
of the idea behind the project.
Limitations
The current study has several limitations. First, manipulation of social motivation
using the two methods of priming did not shape individuals’ motivations during
contribution decision making in predicted directions in Experiment 1. With a larger
sample in Experiment 3 and 4, however, the social manipulation did induce the predicted
effect. Taken together, statistical power in Experiment 1 was not high enough to detect
the effect of manipulation of social motivation due to a small sample size.
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118
Because of this problem, to measure prosocial and proself motivation, I used the
items that assessed the degree to which they considered prosocial or proself values in
transaction decision making. Since these items were measured after the website activity,
the causal relation is hard to establish. Future research should be conducted with
consideration of sample size and a refined method of priming social motivation.
The non-significant effects of interface cues may be argued as being due to
methodological problems. In particular, the stimulus used in this study contained lots of
information, possibly making each cue less prominent. Having the stimulus as a whole
look as realistic as it can be was an intentional choice in this study for ecological validity.
Future research can conduct a series of pretests to examine the conditions at which the
cues become prominent and noticed by participants without sacrificing ecological
validity.
Another issue in the stimulus that calls for a cautious interpretation of the study
centers around the reward options. Reward levels used in the stimulus can be
problematic because as the rewards go up, the values for those rewards do not increase in
equal increments. For example, with $25, backers could get one full kit, but each
additional contribution offered them little additional benefit. Thus, the amount of
contribution used in this study was hard to use to estimate the true amount of resources
one would be willing to spend.
With regard to measuring contribution, the reader may argue that participants’
contribution or non-contribution at the Small Society site may not reflect their true choice
because of the artificial setting. Especially given the free $25 to use at the site,
participants could have decided to spend the money even if they did not want to
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119
contribute to the featured crowdfunding project. In other words, participants might not
have been serious in their decision making as they would be in real life. To investigate
this issue, I examined participants’ comments where they were asked to provide reasons
for contribution (for those who contributed) and for non-contribution (for those who did
not contribute). There was no clear evidence of non-seriousness in their contribution
decisions or discrepancy between the experimental setting and the real situation. A
participant who decided to contribute to the Makey Makey project noted as follows:
I contributed to Makey Makey project because the person did not need a large
contribution and it seemed like the person had a reasonable and sustainable idea.

Another participant noted, “It was quite interesting and I could definitely see
myself and even my child using it. Highly creative and it had a fun video.” Non-
contributors also had clear and realistic reasons for not contributing on the mock site. For
example, one participant left the following comments:
I am a very practical sort of person and tend to leave the artistic innovative stuff
to others. I much prefer to contribute to things that will have an impact on the
environment, animal welfare, equalizing groups in society etc. I figure that my
dollars are so limited that I really do want to get the most “bang” for the buck and
only support causes that are really important to me and represent my values.

Finally, as another issue related to measurement, information processing
measured by recall measures must be interpreted carefully. Measures of information
recall often contain errors related to people’s misunderstanding of the question or
variance in interpreting the question. People may have not described practical, hedonic,
and prosocial values of the project because they were not asked to describe the project in
those particular aspects. Simply not mentioning them in the recall question may not
indicate they did not attend to that information.
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120
Conclusion
This dissertation aimed to investigate credibility evaluation in crowdfunding, a
type of online p2p economy, as it is affected by motivational factors, particularly social
motivation. Using in-depth interviews and experiments, this dissertation showed that
information processing and contribution decisions in crowdfunding are shaped by social
motivation which biases individuals’ selection of information to process according to
their prosocial or proself goals. Crowdfunding represents a context rich of information
about projects and project creators, which are used by backers for credibility judgments,
and an economic context where both social and economic motives come into play.
The current dissertation is among the first empirical studies that explicitly address
the role of social motivation in credibility evaluation in online contexts. Despite the need
for considering motivational and contextual factors in online credibility evaluation, much
of previous research focused on the effects of web interface cues on credibility
judgments. Motivated information processing model has proved its relevance in the
context of crowdfunding as it was shown that backers attended to different pieces of
information depending on their prosocial or proself motivation. In addition, backers
perceived the creator more credible when they were more prosocially motivated.
This dissertation is also the first attempt to examine crowdfunding users’
information processing especially credibility evaluation criteria. Findings from this study
can be used to help project creators or fundraisers in crowdfunding develop more
effective communication strategies for highlighting their credibility in the fashion that
apply to actual backers’ mind and behavior. Project creators and fundraisers can also
devise strategies that take a wide diversity of backer motivations into consideration.
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121
System designers of crowdfunding platforms can also benefit from insights from the
studies in this dissertation. Specifically, Study 1 explains heavy users’ tendencies
whereas Study 2 reflects first timers’. Different dynamics found in these studies can
inform crowdfunding design choices so as to support creators’ successful funding and to
address the needs and motivations by backers with different intensity levels.

!!
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122
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Appendix A
Interview Guide

I. Crowdfunding Project Creators

Segment 1: Opening (3 minutes)

Thank you for agreeing to participate in this research. I am interested in learning more
about how you prepare, launch, and share projects on [site name]. Your thoughts and
information about your usage of [site name] will help me understand the process of
project management on [site name], which is a vital component of my dissertation study.

The interview should take less than an hour. I will be recording our interview because I
don’t want to miss any details. I would appreciate if you can speak up so that the recorder
can capture your voice well. Please note that all responses will be kept confidential. This
means that your responses will only be accessed by myself and used for academic
purposes only. Any information I include in my paper will not identify you as the
respondent. You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to and you may end
the interview at any time. However, I would appreciate if you can speak freely and
honestly and provide me as much information as you can.

Before we begin, I would like to confirm once again whether you are 18 years old or
older although you have told me so via email.

[OBTAIN AGE CONFIRMATION]

Are there any questions about the interview process or recording? Are you willing to
participate in this interview?

[OBTAIN CONSENT]

Thank you so much again for agreeing to participate in this interview.

Segment 2: General Crowdfunding Questions (10 minutes)

1. First of all, I would like to hear about your general experience on [site name]. When
and how did you first learn about [site name]?
2. What motivated you to actually launch a project on [site name]?
3. How familiar are you with other sites similar to [site name]?
a. [PROBE IF NEEDED] Why did you choose [site name] over other similar
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137
sites?
b. [PROBE IF NEEDED] Are there advantages and disadvantages for using
these platforms from the creators’ perspectives?
4. How many projects have you launched so far on [site name]?
a. [RECORD NUMBER]
b. [PROBE IF 3 OR LESS] Can you describe each of the projects? What was
it about? Which genre is it classified under? (Give the list of genres
specified by the site)
1. Kickstarter genres: art, comics, dance, design, fashion,
film, food, games, music, photography, publishing,
technology, and theater
2. Indiegogo genres: animals, art, comic, community, dance,
design, education, environment, fashion, film, food,
gaming, health, music, photography, politics, religion,
small business, sports, technology, theater, transmedia,
video/web, writing
c. [PROBE IF MORE THAN 3] Can you pick three and describe each? What
was it about? Which genre is it classified under?
5. Of all your projects, how many of them were fully funded? [RECORD AND
REMEMBER THE NUMBER]

Segment 3: Specific Questions about Project Management Experience on [site name] (20-
30 minutes)

I. Constructing a creator profile

1. Now, let’s talk more specifically about your experience as a project creator on
[site name]. Describe how you drafted the content that goes on your creator
profile. What kinds of information did you include? And why?
a. [PROBE IF NEEDED] How often do you change your creator profile
whether to add/remove information, or update about yourself?

II. Preparing a project
1. Now, think about your most successful project. To launch the project, what kind
of preparations did you do? [GIVE EXAMPLES IF NEEDED: did you make a
budget, review other projects, brainstorm, consult any professional, planning for
advertising, etc.?]
2. When you did what you have just described [name the specific activity that
interviewee mentioned], where you did gather the needed information? In other
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138
words, what kinds of information sources did you use?
a. [PROMPT IF NEEDED] Do you ever get information from any personal
contact? Other creators you encountered on [site name]? Specialized
consultant for crowdfunding? Blogs or communities? Information from
[site name]?

3. How did you decide about rewards for backers for the project?
4. Please describe how you drafted the content that goes on the project page. What
kinds of information did you include? And why?
a. [PROBE IF NEEDED] In creating your project page, what did you do to
highlight your credibility as a project creator? By credibility, I mean that
you are reliable and capable to accomplish the proposed project.
b. [PROBE IF NEEDED] In creating your project page, what did you do to
effectively communicate your project details?
c. [PROBE IF NEEDED] In creating your project page, what kinds of
strategy did you have in mind in order to attract more backers?

III. Communicating about a project

1. How often did you update the project page?
2. How did you communicate with your backers in other ways than updates? (e.g.,
email, private message). Why did you choose the medium?
3. How did you share your project?
d. [PROMPT IF NEEDED] Did you share it to your social network via any
of the social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter? Send emails to
personal contacts? Post the project page on community forums? Connect
with famous bloggers to share the project on their blogs? Connect with
journalists to advertise the project on media? Got featured on [site name]
as staff picks?

IV. Funding
1. How would you describe the funding process? When did it start to take off and
when was the peak time?
2. After the funding period ends, what did you do?
a. [PROBE IF FULLY FUNDED] How would you describe your project
progress?
b. [PROBE IF NOT FULLY FUNDED] What did you do with the project?
3. [ASK IF AT LEAST ONE PROJECT FULLY FUNDED] In your experience,
what do you think made your project fully funded? What differences were there
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139
between fully funded projects and others?
4. [ASK IF NONE WAS FULLY FUNDED] In hindsight, why do you think the
project didn’t get fully funded?
a. [PROBE IF NEEDED] What would you have done differently? What did
you do with the project that wasn’t fully funded? Did you launch it again?
Improve and launch it again? Completely discard it?

Segment 4: Closing (5 minutes)

1. Is crowdfunding project your primary job?
a. [PROBE IF CROWDFUNDING PROJECT IS THEIR PRIMARY JOB]
How long have you used [site name] as a primary method for living?
b. [PROBE IF CROWDFUNDING PROJECT IS NOT THEIR PRIMARY
JOB] How much time do you spend on managing your project on [site
name]? For example, per week?
2. Finally, which age range do you fall into?
! Under 18
! 18-24
! 25-34
! 35-44
! Over 45
3. This concludes our interview. Is there anything else you would like to add before
we finish this interview?
4. [RECORD GENDER]

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140
II. Crowdfunding Backers

Segment 1: Opening (3 minutes)

Thank you for agreeing to participate in this research. I am interested in learning more
about how you make decisions as to which projects to back or fund on [site name]. Your
thoughts and information about your usage of [site name] will help me understand the
process of crowdfunding on [site name], which is a vital component of my dissertation
study.

The interview should take less than an hour. I will be recording our interview because I
don’t want to miss any details. I would appreciate if you can speak up so that the recorder
can capture your voice well. Please note that all responses will be kept confidential. This
means that your responses will only be accessed by myself and used for academic
purposes only. Any information I include in my paper will not identify you as the
respondent. You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to and you may end
the interview at any time. However, I would appreciate if you can speak freely and
honestly and provide me as much information as you can.

Before we begin, I would like to confirm once again whether you are 18 years old or
older although you have told me so via email.

[OBTAIN AGE CONFIRMATION]

Are there any questions about the interview process or recording? Are you willing to
participate in this interview?

[OBTAIN CONSENT]

Thank you so much again for agreeing to participate in this interview.

Segment 2: General Crowdfunding Questions (10 minutes)

1. First, I would like to hear about your experience on [site name]. When and how
did you first learn about [site name]?
2. What motivated you to fund your project for the first time?
3. How familiar are you with other sites similar to [site name]?
a. [PROBE IF NEEDED] Why did you choose [site name] over other similar
sites?
b. [PROBE IF NEEDED] Are there advantages and disadvantages for using
these platforms from the funders’ perspectives?
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141
4. How many projects have you funded so far on [site name]? How many projects
have you funded on other sites similar to [site name]?
a. [RECORD NUMBER]

5. In general, which areas/topics/genres of the projects do you fund? And why?
a. [PROMPT IF NEEDED] Give the list of genres specified by the site.
ii. Kickstarter genres: art, comics, dance, design, fashion, film, food,
games, music, photography, publishing, technology, and theater
iii. Indiegogo genres: animals, art, comic, community, dance, design,
education, environment, fashion, film, food, gaming, health, music,
photography, politics, religion, small business, sports, technology,
theater, transmedia, video/web, writing

Segment 3: Specific Questions about Funding Experience on [site name] (20-30 minutes)

I. Browsing projects and creator profiles
1. Now, I would like to hear more specifically about your experience of funding
projects on [site name]. First, how do you browse projects to fund? Describe as
many ways as you can recall.
a. [PROMPT IF NEEDED] Do you subscribe to email updates from [site
name]? Browse sites to search projects of interest? Look for staff picks?
Follow recommendations by friends or other personal connections?
Follow recommendations by bloggers or other influential persons online
that you don’t have a personal connection with? Follow recommendations
by media?
2. Have you ever checked creator’s profile? If so, why and what aspects of the
profile did you particularly pay attention to? If you do not check the creator’s
profile, why not?

II. Making funding decisions
1. When you decide to fund a project, what kinds of information are you looking
for? Can you rank the criteria by importance?
a. [PROMPT IF NEEDED] Do you care about project ideas or causes?
Feasibility of projects? Credibility of project creator? Need by project
creator? How good the rewards are? Whether it is a pre-order for products
soon to be in the market? Know the project creator personally? Have
funded the project creator previously (repeat funding)? Have my
connections made a contribution?
2. How do you decide how much money to fund?
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142
3. How much do you care about whether the projects you fund will be actually
completed?
4. What sorts of efforts do you ever make to ensure project completion?
a. [PROMPT IF NEEDED] subscribe to the project? Visit the project page to
check updates? Contact the project creator via email or private message
5. Do you consider your funding as donation or investment? Or something else?
6. In your observation of [site name], what do you think make projects fully funded?
What are some differences between fully funded projects and others?

Segment 4: Closing (5 minutes)

1. What is your occupation?
2. Finally, which age range do you fall into?
! Under 18
! 18-24
! 25-34
! 35-44
! Over 45
3. This concludes our interview. Is there anything else you would like to add before
we finish this interview?
4. [RECORD GENDER]

!
143
Appendix B
MTurk Recruitment Ad

Title: 15-20 min experiment/survey about online shopping/crowdfunding

Hello!
I am a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication in the University of
Southern California. I’m conducting a study on online transactions especially in the
context of shopping or crowdfunding as part of my doctoral dissertation. You must live in
the US and be 18 years old or older to participate in this study.

This study includes three tasks:
(1) Task 1 (Informed consent and instructions): Click on the link below, which will
lead you to a survey. You will read information about the study there and answer
some questions. At the end of Task 1, you will be given instructions about the
next task and be asked to click on a link to a website.
(2) Task 2 (Website activity): Once on the website, you will browse its pages, obtain
as much information as you can, and make a transaction decision.
(3) Task 3 (Questionnaire): After finishing the website activity, you will come back
to the survey in Task 1 and complete the remaining questionnaire. A confirmation
code for MTurk payment will be given immediately after you submit your
response.

The entire process will take approximately 15-20 minutes. Payment will be processed
within 48 hours of completion (of all three tasks).

Select the link below to start the study.

[link]

Make sure to leave this window open as you complete the survey. When you are finished,
you will return to this page to paste the confirmation code into the box.
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144
Appendix C
Measures

Topic Involvement
Please rate your feelings about the topics (i.e., DIY electronics, science education,
learning tools, open source, hacker and maker culture) related to the Makey Makey
project. If you have different feelings about the above topics, pick the most prominent
one and rate your feelings about that one.
[7-point bi-polar scale used]
1. Irrelevant – Relevant
2. Uninteresting – Interesting
3. Unenjoyable – Enjoyable
4. Unimportant – Important
5. Means nothing to me – Means a lot to me
6. Of concern to me – Of no concern

Information Recall
In the space below, please write down everything you can remember about the Makey
Makey project. Writing in short words, phrases, bullet points are fine. It is completely
OK if you don't remember a lot of details. Just tell us about whatever is prominent in
your memory.

Creator Credibility
Please indicate your impressions of the creators.
[7-point bi-polar scale used]
1. Intelligent – Unintelligent
2. Untrained – Trained
3. Inexpert – Expert
4. Incompetent – Competent
5. Have my interests at heart – Don’t have my interests at heart
6. Self-centered – Not self-centered
7. Insensitive – Sensitive
8. Not understanding – Understanding
9. Honest – Dishonest
10. Untrustworthy – Trustworthy
11. Honorable – Dishonorable
12. Unethical – Ethical

Contribution
Did you contribute to the Makey Makey project?
1. Yes
2. No

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145
[If “Yes” is selected]
- Why did you contribute to the Makey Makey project? Please provide your reasons for
contribution briefly in the space below.
- How much did you spend? (Please enter numbers only)
- How did you decide on that amount?

[If “No” is selected]
- Why did you not contribute to the Makey Makey project? Please provide your reasons
for non-contribution briefly in the space below.

Information Credibility
Please evaluate the information included on the project page.

[7-point bi-polar scale used]
1. Not believable – Believable
2. Inaccurate – Accurate
3. Untrustworthy – Trustworthy
4. Unbiased – Biased
5. Incomplete – Complete

Perceived Website Credibility
Please indicate how you perceived the Small Society website.

[7-point bi-polar scale used]
1. Undependable – Dependable
2. Unreliable – Reliable
3. Not secure – Secure

Perceived Project Quality
Please rate the quality of the project.
[5-star rating scale used]

Attitude Toward Creators
Please rate your general feelings about the creators.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Extreme
Dislike
Moderate
Dislike
Slight
Dislike
Neutral Slight
Like
Moderate
Like
Extreme
Dislike

Attitude Toward Project
Please rate your general feelings about the project.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Extreme
Dislike
Moderate
Dislike
Slight
Dislike
Neutral Slight
Like
Moderate
Like
Extreme
Dislike

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146
Social Value Orientation
First, we'd like you to complete a simple task in the following. In this task, we ask you to
imagine that you have been randomly paired with another person, whom we will refer to
simply as the “Other.” This other person is someone you do not know and you will not
knowingly meet in the future. Both you and the “Other” person will be making choices
by selecting either the letter A, B, or C. Your own choices will produce points for both
yourself and the “Other” person. Likewise, the other’s choice will produce points for
him/her and for you. Every point has value: The more points you receive, the better for
you, and the more points the “Other” receives, the better for him/her. Here’s an example
of how this task works:
A: You get 500; Other gets 100
B: You get 500; Other gets 500
C: You get 550; Other gets 300

In this example, if you chose A you would receive 500 points and the other would receive
100 points; if you chose B, you would receive 500 points and the other 500; and if you
chose C, you would receive 550 and the other 300. So, you see that your choice
influences both the number of points you receive and the number of points the other
receives. Before you begin making choices, please keep in mind that there are no right or
wrong answers—choose the option that you, for whatever reason, prefer most. Also,
remember that the points have value: The more of them you accumulate, the better for
you. Likewise, from the other’s point of view, the more points s/he accumulates, the
better for him/her. For each of the nine choice situations, select A, B, or C, depending on
which option you prefer most.

1. Situation 1
a. A: You get 480; Other gets 80
b. B: You get 540; Other gets 280
c. C: You get 480; Other gets 480

2. Situation 2
a. A: You get 560; Other gets 300
b. B: You get 500; Other gets 500
c. C: You get 500; Other gets 100

3. Situation 3
a. A: You get 520; Other gets 520
b. B: You get 520; Other gets 120
c. C: You get 580; Other gets 320

4. Situation 4
a. A: You get 500; Other gets 100
b. B: You get 560; Other gets 300
c. C: You get 490; Other gets 490

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147
5. Situation 5
a. A: You get 560; Other gets 300
b. B: You get 500; Other gets 500
c. C: You get 490; Other gets 90

6. Situation 6
a. A: You get 500; Other gets 500
b. B: You get 500; Other gets 100
c. C: You get 570; Other gets 300

7. Situation 7
a. A: You get 510; Other gets 510
b. B: You get 560; Other gets 300
c. C: You get 510; Other gets 110

8. Situation 8
a. A: You get 550; Other gets 300
b. B: You get 500; Other gets 100
c. C: You get 500; Other gets 500

9. Situation 9
a. A: You get 480; Other gets 100
b. B: You get 490; Other gets 490
c. C: You get 540; Other gets 300

Crowdfunding Experience
1. How often do you visit crowdfunding sites?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Never Less than
Once a
Month
Once a
Month
2-3 Times
a Month
Once a
Week
2-3 Times
a Week
Daily

2. How much experience do you have with crowdfunding?
1 2 3 4 5
None At
All
A Little A
Moderate
Amount
A Lot A Great
Deal

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148
3.How much knowledge of crowdfunding do you have?
1 2 3 4 5
None At
All
A Little A
Moderate
Amount
A Lot A Great
Deal

Familiarity with Makey Makey
Had you heard of the Makey Makey project before you participated in this study?
1. Yes
2. No

[If “Yes” is selected]
Did you contribute to this project on Kickstarter?
1. Yes
2. No

Social Motivation (Manipulation Check)
In making your decision to contribute to the project or not, how much did you consider
the following matters?

1. I considered how my contribution would benefit the creators.
2. I considered how my contribution would help other people benefit from this
project.
3. I considered how much I wanted to try out the kit on my own.
4. I considered how much I enjoyed the project itself.
5. I considered how my contribution would make a positive impact on a community
of creative entrepreneurs and innovators.

Video (Manipulation Check)
Please indicate the degree to which you agree with the following statements about the
Makey Makey project.

1. The project page included a video with a lot of detailed information about the
project.
2. I understand how the Makey Makey kit works.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Somewhat
Disagree
Neither
Agree nor
Disagree
Somewhat
Agree
Agree Strongly
Agree
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Somewhat
Disagree
Neither
Agree nor
Disagree
Somewhat
Agree
Agree Strongly
Agree
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149
3. The Makey Makey is a clever invention.

Number of Backers (Manipulation Check)
Please indicate the degree to which you agree with the following statements about the
Makey Makey project.

1. There were many contributors to the Makey Makey project.
2. The project has attracted considerable attention from other people.

Number of Contributions by Creator (Manipulation Check)
Please indicate the degree to which you agree with the following statements about the
creators of Makey Makey.

1. They have participated in many projects by other creators.
2. They are concerned about the well-being of others.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Somewhat
Disagree
Neither
Agree nor
Disagree
Somewhat
Agree
Agree Strongly
Agree
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Somewhat
Disagree
Neither
Agree nor
Disagree
Somewhat
Agree
Agree Strongly
Agree

Abstract (if available)

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Asset Metadata

Creator Kim, Young Ji (author)

Core Title Social motivation and credibility in crowdfunding

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publication Date 10/01/2014

Defense Date 08/25/2014

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag credibility,crowdfunding,digital cues,OAI-PMH Harvest,online P2P economy,prosocial behavior,social motivation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Hollingshead, Andrea B. (committee chair), Carnevale, Peter (committee member), Jian, Lian (committee member), McLaughlin, Margaret L. (committee member)

Creator Email youngji.kim@gmail.com,youngji@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-487545

Unique identifier UC11287059

Identifier etd-KimYoungJi-2995.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-487545 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-KimYoungJi-2995.pdf

Dmrecord 487545

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Kim, Young Ji

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA