eThesis - Kauppakorkeakoulun sähköiset gradut

In recent years, crowdfunding has emerged as a new way of soliciting funding from a large audience to enable entrepreneurial projects. Crowdfunding has been growing in popularity across different sectors and one especially popular subgenre of crowdfunding is video games crowdfunding. Despite the growing popularity, little dedicated research exists on why people participate in crowdfunding and what motivates and deters their participation in it. This thesis studies the motivations and deterrents of crowdfunding participants through three questions: what motivates and deters people to participate in crowdfunding, are the motivations extrinsic or intrinsic in nature, and what kind of groups can be identified among crowdfunding participants and how their motivations differ from each other.

The structure of this thesis is as follows: we first review existing literature and present a conceptual framework to predict motivations of crowdfunding participants. We then review methology used in the empirical sections of the thesis. Next, we present the results of both the preliminary survey used to complement the scarce literature on crowdfunding motivations and deterrents, as well as present the primary study that examines motivations for participating in video games crowdfunding. Finally, we discuss the results and present our conclusions along with managerial implications and potential avenues for future research.

This thesis uses both qualitative and quantitative methods. The empirical part of the thesis builds on data gathered in two stages: the first phase contains an open-ended qualitative survey, the findings of which are used as input for the quantitative survey in the second phase accompanied with insights gathered from the literature review. The preliminary qualitative data is analyzed using thematic analysis, and the primary quantitative data with univariate methods and cluster analysis.

The results of the thesis indicate that individuals participating in video games crowdfunding are primarily motivated by consumption and philanthropic motives and correspondingly that motivations to participate are both extrinsic and intrinsic in nature. Cluster analysis performed on the primary survey data also indicates that two primary motivational groups exist: "Buyers" and "Supporters". "Buyers" are primarily motivated by consumption motives, while "Supporters" identify with most of the motives in our conceptual framework.