Effects of Donor- and Supporter-Based Campaign Networks on Crowdfunding Campaign Success

Abstract

Driven by the increasing popularity of crowdfunding, academic researchers have examined the impacts of internal social capital accumulated on crowdfunding platforms and external social capital formed through online and offline friend networks on campaign success. However, no research has examined the impacts of social networks from a structural perspective. In the current research, we investigate the extent to which donor- and supporter-based campaign network centralities affect the amount of capital a fundraising campaign is able to generate. Using a panel data set collected from a donation-based crowdfunding platform, Fundly, we reveal that campaign network centralities based on strong ties (shared donors) and weak ties (shared supporters) are more important predictors of fundraising success than the number of donors a campaign has.