Effects of social media on diffusion of responsibility in crowdfunding

One of the growing industries in today's world is the crowdfunding industry. Crowdfunding can be considered as a collaborative social media. Since the early stages of its development, crowdfunding has made use of social media as a way of attracting more people to fund projects. Therefore, there have been many studies on the effect of social media on crowdfunding campaigns and how these campaigns can benefit from using features provided by social media websites. One of the unique characteristics of crowdfunding is a trait called ``Diffusion of Responsibility''. This happens when there is a decrease in a person's tendency of helping others in presence of other people. What we want to do in this study is to see how much diffusion of responsibility actually exists and whether it can be affected by the features unique to the social media websites. In this study we are particularly interested in examining the effects of Facebook on the diffusion of responsibility effect observed in crowdfunding. Previous research on the diffusion of responsibility effect shows that potential backers may be demotivated to fund a project when it has reached a high level of funding. There is, however, a lack of research on whether tie-strength between the backers may moderate the diffusion of responsibility effect. To study this, we designed an interface to examine how the level of existing support may interact with the strength of relationships to impact people's attention to a project and their decision to fund. Results will have important implication to campaign strategies in crowdfunding.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Tayefeh Hosseinlou, Sadaf

Contributors dc:contributor

• Fu, Wai-Tat

• crowdfunding
• backer
• creator

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2015 Sadaf Tayefeh Hosseinlou

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/88068

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/88068