Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>Social ventures that are fundraising through crowdfunding often involve major donors to influence the contributions of smaller donors. We theorize that male and female donors will respond differently to alternative major-donor contribution schemes that are commonly used by social ventures. In a field experiment, donors were randomly assigned to receive one of three solicitation messages about a pair of projects that were seeking funds through crowdfunding. All donors received identical messages, with the exception that information on major-donor involvement was varied across conditions. The message to the control group made no mention of a major donor. The seed group was informed that a major donor had unconditionally funded the first 50% of the projects' costs and that the projects were collecting the remaining 50% from other donors; we hypothesize that this scheme is likely to appeal to female donors, who tend to be more uncertainty and risk averse. Finally, the challenge-match group was informed that a major donor would provide the remaining 50% of the projects' costs after the projects secure the first 50% from other donors; we hypothesize that this scheme is likely to appeal to male donors, who tend to respond more positively to challenges. The major donor in the field experiment-Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft-is a government agency that promotes and funds innovation in Austria. We find that females in the seed group are ~50% and ~35% more likely to exhibit an interest in contributing, as compared to females in the control or challenge-match conditions, respectively. Among males, we do not observe significant differences in interest in contributing across the three groups. A subsequent survey indicates that females are more responsive to the seed scheme because it yields a perception that the organization conducting the project is of highquality, is likely to reach its funding goal, and is likely to achieve its implementation goals.</p> <p> </p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3938577 Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question Sample Trial population and sample selection Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables Results Intervention costs Cost benefit ratio Reference Citation for use in academic references
