Social entrepreneurial crowdfunding: Influence of the type of rewards and of prosocial motivation on the crowds’ willingness to contribute

Drawing on self-leadership theory, this study investigates the influence of rewards, – classified as natural rewards and material rewards, – and of prosocial motivation on the crowds’ willingness to contribute to social entrepreneurial crowdfunding. Data was collected from a tailor-made crowdfunding campaign. Survey results from 208 respondents confirmed that the expectation of natural rewards is positively related to the crowds’ willingness to contribute to social entrepreneurial crowdfunding and that prosocial motivation mediated this relationship. Likewise, we found a strong negative relationship between material rewards and prosocial motivation. Surprisingly, this negative relationship weakly affected the willingness to contribute. In other words, material rewards can crowd-out the prosocial motivation, but with limited impact on the willingness to contribute. These findings extend current understanding of the motivational drivers of social entrepreneurial crowdfunding in a prosocial-giving context. It contributes to theory-driven knowledge of crowdfunding by applying self-leadership theory to social entrepreneurial crowdfunding. The study implies that social entrepreneurs must strategically design their crowdfunding campaign to enhance the crowds’ prosocial motivation and expectation of natural rewards in order to attract funders that are most likely to contribute. The study calls for future investigation on the design of crowdfunding campaigns with or without material rewards.