信息管理与商业智能系讲座（6月2日）

题目：How Platform Funding Models Shape the Effect of Project Stage in Crowdfunding: The Role of Psychological Ownership

主讲人：屈锗 副教授    信息管理与商业智能系

时间：2026-06-02 13:30-14:30

地点：李达三楼105室   

内容摘要:Why do some early-stage crowdfunding projects attract substantial support despite their greater uncertainty, while more mature projects sometimes struggle? We address this puzzle by arguing that project stage affects crowdfunding performance not only through perceived readiness, but also through psychological ownership. Early-stage projects are more likely to evoke ownership-related attachment because they appear more open, malleable, and influenceable. This mechanism should be stronger under Keep-It-All (KIA) than under All-or-Nothing (AON) funding because KIA makes individual participation more readily experienced as consequential, and stronger for physical than for digital products because physical products provide clearer cues of possession and more concrete ownership targets. We test these arguments using a large-scale archival dataset of 54,290 Indiegogo campaigns, supplemented by within-platform matching and a matched same-project cross-platform comparison with Kickstarter. The results show that early-stage projects generate stronger campaign-level psychological ownership than later-stage projects, and that psychological ownership is positively associated with campaign success, funds raised, and the number of backers. Bootstrapped analyses further show that the indirect effect of project stage on crowdfunding performance through psychological ownership is stronger under KIA than under AON, and stronger for physical than for digital products.

This study contributes to crowdfunding research by showing that project stage is not only a signal of readiness or uncertainty, but also a source of ownership-based support. It contributes to digital platform research by showing that funding models shape the meaning of participation, not merely the allocation of resources. It also extends psychological ownership theory to a platform-mediated pre-acquisition setting in which incomplete products can evoke ownership-related attachment during the funding process.