Crowdfunding and Sustainable Development: a good match?

This dissertation sets out to explore the role of crowdfunding in promoting sustainable development. It explores the role of specialized crowdfunding platforms in contributing to SD and under which conditions they can contribute to SD by considering both platform-related and founder/product-related factors. The dissertation employs two articles in order to explore this. The first is a conceptual paper based on a deductive reasoning approach which investigates a specific type of crowdfunding platforms (i.e. Islamic crowdfunding platforms) and their potential contribution to sustainable development through a conceptual typology. The second is an empirical paper exploring how crowdfunding could benefit developing countries in moving toward sustainable development. It investigates whether and how geographical factors (specifically the distinction between developed and developing countries) may have an impact also in a crowdfunding context, i.e., on the success of prosocial crowdfunding campaigns. The dissertation finds that crowdfunding contribution to sustainable development is not granted, and it is context-specific. Crowdfunding platforms play a critical role in contributing to sustainable development through the several actions and strategies they adopt. How the crowdfunding platform promotes itself and the type of crowd it targets could impact its sustainable development contribution and the sustainable development goals to which it contributes. Moreover, founder/product-related factors have an impact on the success of crowdfunding campaigns aiming to contribute to sustainable development. Donors’ decision-making behaviours could be influenced by home bias and the perceived credibility of the project initiator, as signalled by the country of origin. Thus, donors prefer allocating their donation budget to developed countries and, when allocating their budgets to developing countries, support project initiators from developed countries rather than from developing countries. Therefore, although crowdfunding possesses considerable potential to contribute to sustainable development, it must overcome numerous obstacles in order to become a genuine driving force for sustainability. The dissertation contributes to the literature in various capacities. Firstly, it contributes to the literature which investigates the innovation potential of CF in contributing to SD, to the literature on CF literature and geography, as well as to charitable-giving literature in the online context. Second, it provides a typology for Islamic crowdfunding platforms to understand the role of these platforms in contributing to sustainable development, which could help policymakers and international development actors to make more informed decisions about which type of Islamic crowdfunding platforms they should regulate and/or support. Finally, it shows the challenges of specialised crowdfunding platforms in contributing to sustainable development in developing countries and the role of geography in the success of prosocial crowdfunding campaigns.