Open Access Journal Article

Financial returns in reward-based crowdfunding

by Victoria Dobrynskaya a,* orcid  and  Julia Grebennikova b
a
School of Finance, HSE University, Moscow, Russia
b
Faculty of Economic Sciences, HSE University, Moscow, Russia
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
EAL  2023, 27; 2(3), 27; https://doi.org/10.58567/eal02030001
Received: 18 April 2023 / Accepted: 24 May 2023 / Published Online: 30 May 2023
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Abstract

We quantify financial returns to backers in reward-based crowdfunding projects on Kickstarter and show that such investments provide profitable opportunities in addition to non-monetary benefits. The average unconditional annualized return is 11.5% and the average return on successful projects is 30%. Hence, backing money near the end of a campaign, when the probability of success is already high, is a profitable strategy. The most attractive is the Design category, where successful projects yield 73%, on average. Short-term projects are more profitable than long-term ones. Financial return is an important type of extrinsic motivation in reward-based crowdfunding, which has generally been neglected in academic literature. Reward-based crowdfunding outperforms other forms of crowdfunding and other common alternative investments.

Keywords: Crowdfunding; investor motivation; alternative investments; alternative finance; entrepreneurial finance;
Copyright: © 2023 by Dobrynskaya and Grebennikova. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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ACS Style
Dobrynskaya, V.; Grebennikova, J. Financial returns in reward-based crowdfunding. Economic Analysis Letters, 2023, 2, 27. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal02030001
AMA Style
Dobrynskaya V, Grebennikova J. Financial returns in reward-based crowdfunding. Economic Analysis Letters; 2023, 2(3):27. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal02030001
Chicago/Turabian Style
Dobrynskaya, Victoria; Grebennikova, Julia 2023. "Financial returns in reward-based crowdfunding" Economic Analysis Letters 2, no.3:27. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal02030001
APA style
Dobrynskaya, V., & Grebennikova, J. (2023). Financial returns in reward-based crowdfunding. Economic Analysis Letters, 2(3), 27. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal02030001

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