Project NCN Sonata 17

SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL MOTIVATIONS FOR SUPPORTING SOCIAL AND COMMERCIAL CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGNS

Project funded by National Science Center, Poland

NCN Sonata 17 Project

Project Leader: Dr. Joanna Adamska
Researcher: Dr. Urszula Mrzygłód

Project funded by the National Science Centre (NCN) under the SONATA 17 competition

Project Number: UMO-2021/43/D/HS4/00781
Project Duration: 2022-2025

Project Description

Raising capital is one of the most significant challenges for new ventures. Entrepreneurs seeking funding for business, commercial, social, or cultural projects face numerous obstacles. Traditional financing methods, such as conventional banking, are often inadequate due to the entrepreneur's lack of experience and, consequently, lack of creditworthiness. Meanwhile, venture capital and business angels—forms of financing dedicated to startups—are primarily focused on innovative projects with high growth potential.

One financing mechanism that has gained particular popularity in recent years, especially for social projects and small local initiatives, is crowdfunding. Crowdfunding can be defined as a form of capital acquisition through an "open call," usually conducted via online platforms. This process typically involves a large number of supporters (contributors) who provide relatively small amounts of money. In most crowdfunding models (except for the charitable model), backers receive something in return for their contributions, such as interest, securities, voting rights, or rewards. The latter is a defining feature of reward-based crowdfunding, which allows campaign organizers to offer incentives in exchange for support.

The reward-based model is particularly interesting due to its low level of institutionalization and the diversity of projects it accommodates. It is especially popular for both commercial projects, which introduce new products or services often through pre-sales, and social projects, which aim to provide social goods and generate societal, humanitarian, or environmental benefits. However, a major issue is that the majority of crowdfunding campaigns fail to reach their financial goals and, therefore, do not succeed in financial terms.

It is widely recognized that the success of a crowdfunding project depends on both the characteristics of the campaign (as presented on the project's webpage) and the motivation of backers. Given the fundamental distinction between social and commercial crowdfunding campaigns, we hypothesize that success factors—such as project attributes and supporter motivations—differ significantly between these two categories. This difference arises because they attract individuals with different personalities, meaning different factors may drive them to support a campaign.

The main objective of this project is to identify the personality traits and project characteristics that influence people's willingness to support commercial and social crowdfunding projects. By doing so, the study aims to reveal the differences between the key factors affecting financial support for social vs. commercial crowdfunding initiatives.

This project stands out from other crowdfunding studies in several ways:

Segmentation of Crowdfunding Projects: Most significant studies on crowdfunding success focus on campaign analysis without distinguishing between social and commercial projects. We believe that this distinction fundamentally changes the key determinants of success.

Examining Intentions to Participate in Crowdfunding: While most studies analyze existing, completed crowdfunding projects, this research aims to determine the willingness of potential backers to participate before they engage in crowdfunding.

Experimental Approach: Unlike traditional studies that rely on post-hoc analysis of crowdfunding campaigns, this project will employ an experimental methodology, making it distinct from existing research.

Integrating Project Characteristics and Supporter Motivations: Most studies focus either on project attributes or supporter motivations separately. This study seeks to integrate both perspectives to provide a more comprehensive understanding of crowdfunding success factors.

Main findings

The project delivered comprehensive insights into the psychological–social mechanisms and campaign characteristics that shape decisions to support crowdfunding initiatives, both social and commercial. Survey and experimental studies involving over one thousand respondents identified key motivators such as attitudes toward crowdfunding, social pressure, a sense of community belonging, altruism, and philanthropic responsibility. The results showed that social and commercial campaigns differ in their engagement mechanisms – in the former, social pressure and community bonds are crucial, while in the latter, individual criteria and the supporter’s digital activity play a greater role.

Experiments revealed that visual elements, especially AI-generated images, can reduce trust when their origin is disclosed, particularly when showing human faces. At the same time, financial transparency works differently – detailed budgets reduced trust in social projects but increased it in commercial ones. The positive effect of transparency was further strengthened by institutional endorsement. Research on non-material rewards showed that matching them to the supporter’s motivational profile is more important than their material value – emotional and symbolic rewards have a particularly strong impact on people guided by social values.

Additional analyses of “hybrid” campaigns – combining commercial and social goals – confirmed that the perceived effectiveness of a project and the emotional nature of its messaging are key to engagement. The findings indicate that support decisions result from a complex interaction between campaign characteristics and supporters’ beliefs, values, and identity. The project made a significant contribution to the development of behavioral finance, providing both theoretical foundations and practical recommendations for campaign creators, crowdfunding platforms, and public and educational institutions.

Scientific Publications

• Adamska, J., Mrzygłód, U., & Fornalska, A. (2025). Non-tangible rewards in crowdfunding: exploring motivation and backers’ preferences. International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, 1-32, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12208-025-00447-8 

• Adamska, J., & Mrzygłód, U. (2025). Social and Commercial Crowdfunding Through the Lens of the Theory of Planned Behaviour and Financial Well-Being. Journal of Banking and Financial Economics, 2025(1), 18-37, https://press.wz.uw.edu.pl/jbfe/vol2025/iss1/3/

• Crowdfunding as Digital Philanthropy: The Impact of Altruism, Responsibility, and Community Engagement on Backer Behavior - under review

• Faces of Trust: How AI-Generated Visuals and Disclosure Impact Authenticity and Trust in Crowdfunding -under review

• Breaking Down the Budget: How Financial Disclosure Shapes Trust and Giving in Crowdfunding - under review

Dissemination of Project Results

Scientific Conferences:

• Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE) 2025 Annual Conference, organized at the University of Trento, Italy, July 5–7, 2025 – participation in the conference with a presentation of project results titled “Faces of Trust: How Visual Cues Shape Backer Trust and Motivation in Social and Commercial Projects”.

• 41st Symposium on Money, Banking and Finance, organized by Université Côte d’Azur, France, July 2–4, 2025 – participation in the symposium with a presentation of project results titled “Principles in Action: Ethical Motivations Across Social and Commercial Crowdfunding Projects”.

• International Conference on Alternative Finance Research, organized by the University of Agder, Norway, April 2–4, 2025 – participation in the conference with a presentation of project results titled “Principles in Action: Ethical Motivations Across Social and Commercial Crowdfunding Projects”, as well as participation in the conference’s organizing committee.

• Participation and presentation of project results at the academic seminar “Around Finance and Banking – Development Perspectives in the Era of Digitalization and Generational Change”, organized by the Department of Finance and Financial Policy of the Cracow University of Economics and the Department of Money and Banking of the Poznań University of Economics and Business, April 23, 2025 – presentation titled “Social vs. Commercial Crowdfunding: A Theory of Planned Behavior and Financial Well-being Perspective”.

• Global Finance Conference, organized by the University of Cagliari, Italy, June 18–20, 2024 – participation in the conference with a presentation of project results titled “Navigating backers’ motivation: Exploring the nuances between commercial and social crowdfunding initiatives”.

• Conference of Finance Departments 2024, organized by the University of Economics in Katowice, September 16–17, 2024 – participation in the conference with a presentation of project results titled “Navigating backers’ motivation: Exploring the nuances between commercial and social crowdfunding initiatives”.

• The 2024 International Conference on Sustainability, Environment, and Social Transition in Economics and Finance (SESTEF 2024), organized at Université Paris Sorbonne, France, December 11–13, 2024 – participation in the conference with a presentation of project results titled “Crowdfunding for environmental sustainability in small hotels and accommodations: Evidence and insights”.

• Participation and presentation of project results at the academic seminar “Crowdfunding Research Seminar”, organized at the University of Agder, Kristiansand, August 30, 2024 – presentation titled “Navigating backers’ motivation: Exploring the nuances between commercial and social crowdfunding initiatives”.