The Hidden Cost of Accommodating Crowdfunder Privacy Preferences: A Randomized Field Experiment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Burtch, Gordon; Ghose, Anindya; Wattal, Sunil
• 署名单位: University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; New York University; Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Temple University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2014.2069
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 949-962
• 关键词: Crowdfunding; privacy; Priming; anonymity; randomized experiment

摘要

Online crowdfunding has received a great deal of attention as a promising avenue to fostering entrepreneurship and innovation. Because online settings bring increased visibility and traceability of transactions, many crowdfunding platforms provide mechanisms that enable a campaign contributor to conceal his or her identity or contribution amount from peers. We study the impact of these information (privacy) control mechanisms on crowdfunder behavior. Employing a randomized experiment at one of the world's largest online crowdfunding platforms, we find evidence of both positive (e.g., comfort) and negative (e.g., privacy priming) causal effects. We find that reducing access to information controls induces a net increase in fund-raising, yet this outcome results from two competing influences-treatment increases willingness to engage with the platform (a 4.9% increase in the probability of contribution) and simultaneously decreases the average contribution (a $5.81 decline). This decline derives from a publicity effect, wherein contributors respond to a lack of privacy by tempering extreme contributions. We unravel the causal mechanisms that drive the results and discuss the implications of our findings for the design of online platforms.