This thesis examines the motivations individuals may have for supporting cultural crowdfunding campaigns through the analysis of online forum posts. In a context where the cultural and artistic industries face uncertainty linked to diminished subsidies and subsequent reduced funds, considerations pertaining to new sources of funding are crucial, further stressing the need to better understand phenomena such as crowdfunding. Hence, the following material draws upon literature pertaining to psychology and behavioral economics mainly to demonstrate that agents tend to privilege rewards which are rather internal and/or intangible when contributing to crowdfunding campaigns. Amongst other things, backers tend to see crowdfunding as a sort of group activity, a community. They are driven internally towards the act of crowdfunding in order to satisfy intrinsic needs. They see certain cultural projects as benefiting or enriching the wider industry, or being of special use to a third, more or less acquainted party. I therefore suggest that overall, the backers which (inter-)act on forums privilege indirect and/or intangible rewards when crowdfunding. To demonstrate this idea, I combine the various defining aspects of both non-use value and intrinsic motivation to obtain a framework that can help me reach this goal. I select the two most active crowdfunding forums I could find, Crowdfundingforum.com and Kickstarterforum.org, to conduct a Sentiment Analysis of forum posts, whilst implying a focus on the heavyweight crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.com. By using an array of terms or combinations of words as markers of the various aspects mentioned above, I verify to what extent various cultural industries, defined early on as “arts”, “publishing”, “film”, “games”, “music”, and “comics & illustration” validate these aspects on the aforementioned forums. The results of my analysis are mixed: it would seem backers pursue different types of rewards to various extents. On one hand, backers sometimes seem to privilege the social aspects of crowdfunding or adopt an investor behavior as they relish to the idea of being part of a convincing and successful campaign. In other cases, backers seem to privilege the utility that the projects or rewards can bring them directly. I conclude that crowdfunding backers do seem to pursue non-use value yet seem to have a mixed relationship with these intangible or intrinsic rewards, and therefore cannot be considered fully intrinsically motivated or self-determined. I conclude by making suggestions for further research. Namely, I believe that applying such methods on a larger-scale, whilst utilizing adequate 2 software could lead to results that are more precise. I also believe closer consideration should be given to the differences between various industries and types of projects.

Onderwerpen: 2000-2021 crowdfunding platforms ondernemerschap donateurs

Auteur: Aurélien J. G. Rougier MA