Crowdlending platforms: reputation on the line

Despite the growing importance of crowdlending platforms as a new avenue for financing businesses, limited attention has been given to understanding how these platforms can enhance their reputation - an essential driver of their development and survival. This study addresses this gap by analyzing the factors that influence platform reputation. Drawing from the literature on corporate reputation and crowdfunding, we employ a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) on a sample of 221 European crowdlending platforms active as of July 2024. We examine how various factors, such as financial performance, social media, media relations, age, media visibility, and country specificity of platforms, combine and causally interact to produce both high and low levels of platform reputation. The results reveal that these factors interact non-linearly, with multiple configurations of conditions (factors) leading to similar reputational outcomes. No single condition alone determines reputation; instead, reputation emerges from different combinations of conditions. By shedding light on the mechanisms that shape platform reputation, this study contributes to corporate reputation and crowdfunding literature. It also provides practical insights for platform managers, showing that if a platform is less competitive in certain areas, it can improve its reputation by compensating through strengths in other domains. Furthermore, regulators and national crowdfunding associations should collaborate to improve the investment environment and promote greater media visibility for crowdlending and the broader crowdfunding sector.