ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an up-to-date review of studies investigating the factors associated with a successful crowdfunding campaign. It aims to distinguish among individual, project, and contextual-level characteristics of a crowdfunding campaign that influence backers’ or investors’ decisions to support a project, thereby, influencing a company’s fundraising success. One of most important factors affecting fundraising success is campaign duration. Most platforms require the entrepreneur to define a campaign duration of between 30 and 60 days, although some platforms allow fundraising campaigns to remain live for up to 90 days. In addition to physical distance, the characteristics of the local area of the project proponent have an influence on fundraising success. For instance, local altruism, that is, the level of altruism among the people living in the same city as the project proponent, and local religiosity has been shown to be important for crowdfunding project success.
