Title: Capturing the role of backers' psychological ownership for value-adding behaviours in reward-based crowdfunding

Authors: Carina Hoffmann; Peter Kenning

Addresses: Department of Marketing, Manchot Graduate School, Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf, Universitaetsstrasse 1, 40225 Duesseldorf, Germany ' Department of Marketing, Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf, Universitaetsstrasse 1, 40225 Duesseldorf, Germany

Abstract: Backers' value-adding behaviours in crowdfunding are of great value for start-ups and significantly affect start-up success. However, despite this substantial impact, little is known about when and why backers engage in value-adding behaviours. Referring to the theory of psychological ownership, we investigate the role of backers' feelings of psychological ownership over the funded venture for their intentions to behave in an advantageous manner for that in the context of reward-based crowdfunding. Our results highlight that backers' psychological ownership has a significant and positive impact on backers' intention to engage in positive word-of-mouth and constructive feedback behaviour. According to our results, this relationship is fully mediated by backers' affective commitment.

Keywords: psychological ownership; reward-based crowdfunding; post-funding behaviour; commitment research; structural equation modelling; word-of-mouth; WOM; constructive feedback.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEB.2022.126262

International Journal of Electronic Business, 2022 Vol.17 No.4, pp.336 - 366

Received: 08 Feb 2021
Accepted: 17 Sep 2021
Published online: 18 Oct 2022 *

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