This study analyzed factors that affect the performance of tourism crowdfunding projects using data from 1,701 projects on a crowdfunding website. The researchers developed hypotheses about how characteristics like charity orientation, video/images, social networks, funding type, trip ratings, backers, funding duration, and funding goal may influence project success. Regression analysis found that charity orientation, smaller funding goals, higher trip ratings, more backers/sponsors, use of video/images, social sharing, and flexible funding models increased the likelihood of reaching funding targets, while longer funding durations did not. The study aims to understand what drives success in tourism crowdfunding by analyzing global data.

1. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 1
Factors Affecting the Performance
of Tourism Crowdfunding Projects:
An Empirical Study
Huiying Li, Zhisheng Wang, Bin Fang, and Yu-Shan Liu
Xiamen University, China
Huaqiao University, China
Harbin Institute of Technology, China
Xiamen University, China

2. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 2
Agenda
• Background
• Goals
• Literature Review and Hypotheses
• Methodology
• Results
• Conclusions

3. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 3
Background

4. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 4
Background

5. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 5
Background
• Tourism crowdfunding projects demonstrate special
characteristics that projects in other industries do not
emphasize.
• First, compared with technology crowdfunding or design
crowdfunding, the goals of tourism projects are relatively low.
• Second, in most tourism crowdfunding projects, the rewards
obtained by backers could not match their pledges.
• Third, technology content embedded in tourism crowdfunding
projects is not as high as that in the projects of main
crowdfunding categories.

6. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 6
Goals
• This study addresses the knowledge gap in
the context of tourism and demonstrates
our understanding of the factors that affect
the performance of tourism crowdfunding
projects in particular.

7. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 7
Literature Review and
Hypotheses
Charity
Score
Backers &
Sponsors
Video
&
Image
Social
Network
Trip
Ratings
Funding
Types

8. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 8
Charitable Cues in Project
Descriptions
• Motivators: not only the monetary compensation or
rewards, but also the non-monetary benefits
• The non-financial motivations of contributors were a
significant factor that helped a project to succeed
(Galuszka and Bystrov, 2014)
• Backers experience the feelings of creators only
through postcards, mails, blogs, pictures, or videos,
and they rarely receive rewards equivalent to their
pledge.

9. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 9
Signals of Project Quality
• In an online crowdfunding environment, it is less
clear for individuals to distinguish the
extraordinary projects from the ordinary ones.
• Mollick (2014), Balboni, et al. (2014) as well as
Inbar and Barzilay (2014) found that a video in a
campaign description could be considered as a
signal of higher quality.
• Joenssen, et al. (2014) and Li and Duan (2014)
demonstrated that the provision of more images
influences the project success positively.

10. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 10
Social Networks of Visitors
• Internal social network ties of project creators
provide benefits of information sharing (Inbar &
Barzilay, 2014; Koning & Model, 2013; Mollick,
2014; Zheng, et al., 2014).
• However, for external visitors browsing the
webpage, they could share the URL in their SNS,
and the pledge from their friends would help
improve the probability of tourism crowdfunding
success.

11. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 11
Funding Types
• all-or-nothing funding model or the fixed model
• keep-it-all funding model or the flexible model
• Prior studies that focus on crowdfunding usually
offer only one funding type (Paul Belleflamme &
Lambert, 2014; Qiu, 2013)
• Cumming, et al. (2014) explored the influence of
funding type on project success.

12. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 12
Characteristics of Projects
• Reputation effects – trip ratings
• Herding effects – backers or sponsors
• Funding durations
• Funding goal

13. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 13
Hypotheses
H1: Charity-orientation expressed in projects is positively related to the performance of tourism
crowdfunding.
H2a: Tourism crowdfunding projects prepared with a video in the description will have a higher
percentage of reaching the funding goal.
H2b: Tourism crowdfunding projects prepared with images in the description will have a higher
percentage of reaching the funding goal.
H2c: The number of sponsors that support a tourism crowdfunding project is positively related to the
percentage of reaching the funding goal.
H3: Sharing among social networks by visitors is positively associated with the performance of tourism
crowdfunding projects.
H4: Flexible fundraising projects are likely to raise more funds than fixed fundraising projects in
crowdfunding for travel.
H5a: Trip ratings of the projects have a positive effect on the performance of tourism crowdfunding.
H5b: The number of backers is positively associated with the performance of tourism crowdfunding
projects.
H5c: Funding durations have a positive effect on the performance of tourism crowdfunding projects.
H5d: Funding goal has a negative effect on the performance of tourism crowdfunding projects.

14. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 14
Methodology
• We collected data from Trevolta (URL:
http://www.trevolta.com/), which is a globally
crowd-funded travel website.
• We used the universe of projects on Trevolta from
its inception in 2013 to October 2014, which created
an initial sample of 1,706 projects. After removing 5
irrelavent projects, 1,701 projects remained in our
sample.

15. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 15
Methodology
• We developed the following regression
model to test our proposed hypotheses

16. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 16
Results
• Of all the projects, 86.60% adopted the flexible model,
and only 13.40% of the projects adopted the fixed
model
• Projects that adopted the fixed model tended to fail by
large margins, with only 2.6% of the projects reaching
their goals. About 25.80% of the projects that adopted
the flexible model managed to be funded. However,
only 1% of them were funded over their goals.

17. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 17
Results
Dependent Variable:
Funding_Percent
Coefficient Standard
Error
T-value Sig.
Constant 0.4290 0.0734 5.84 0.000
log(Funding_Goal) -0.0669 0.0082 -8.12 0.000
Trip_Rating 0.0303 0.0034 8.92 0.000
Sponsors 0.0446 0.0115 3.86 0.000
Backers 0.0099 0.0007 15.17 0.000
Durations 0.0000 0.0000 0.34 0.737
Video 0.0454 0.0156 2.90 0.000
Image 0.0286 0.0135 2.12 0.034
Funding_Type -0.1263 0.0171 -7.38 0.000
Charity_Score 0.0469 0.0059 7.94 0.000
Social_Network 0.0388 0.0054 7.13 0.000
Number of obs = 1701 LR chi2(10) = 894.35
Log likelihood = -208.43879 Pseudo R2
= 0.6821

18. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 18
Conclusions
• The charity orientation implied in the project would help
creators achieve higher pledge levels.
• projects with a smaller goal, a greater trip rating, and more
backers would have a better fundraising performance.
• In terms of the volume of reposts about the project in
Facebook and Twitter, social networks turn out to be an
important factor that affects the performance of tourism
crowdfunding.
• Projects adopting the fixed model would attract more backers
to pledge than projects adopting the flexible model.

19. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 19
Conclusions
• To our knowledge, this research is one of the
first studies to explore the determinants of
the success of tourism crowdfunding projects
by using global data.
• This study supplements the findings of prior
research and provides a better view of the
factors that influence the performance of
crowdfunding across barriers in different
fields.

20. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 20
Limitations
• we did not consider other variables that might
affect the performance of crowdfunding, such as
the number of rewards, the number of creators in
a team, and the number of friends or followers
that the project creators have.
• this study did not consider the delivery of project
rewards, which is important for creators to
initiate other projects and for their credibility.

21. ENTER 2016 Research Track Slide Number 21
THANKS VERY MUCH!