Challenges and opportunities for crowdfunding in emerging markets: an ethical perspective

Still marginal 10 years ago, crowdfunding is now growing and represents a larger share of the economy each year, especially in emerging markets. At the same time, research on alternative investments in emerging markets is growing at a much faster pace than other similar fields. Indeed, policymakers, investors, and entrepreneurs from emerging markets need to gain a better understanding about the impact of fundraising innovations on sustainable growth in their home countries to facilitate entrepreneurship, growth, and employment. In this chapter, we will firstly review the foundations of crowdfunding as an innovative model, the importance of ethics in this model as well as the responses of regulators to adapt the legislative frameworks in developing countries. Secondly, we will address the question of ethics that characterizes the crowdfunding platform sector today through a double response based both on the stakeholder theory and on the corporate governance theory.