Evaluating the impact of project and operational complexities on the crowdfunding campaigns of new technologies: An empirical investigation

Crowdfunding campaigns have emerged as a vital financing alternative for sourcing financial resources for new projects in recent years. However, risks in the post-campaign phase remain largely hidden and warrant concern. This paper aims to illuminate the reasons and extent of potential delays in the fulfilment phase of reward-based crowdfunding campaigns, which may encompass activities such as procuring products, receiving shipments, and organizing orders. We gathered data on 1,567 novel technology projects successfully funded between 2009 and 2017 and employed web scraping and text mining techniques to analyze and extract valuable insights. Subsequently, we investigated the effects of linear, interaction, and quadratic functions. Our results reveal that project and operational complexities significantly contribute to reward delivery delays, with an inverted U-shaped relationship existing between the number of updates and manufacturing operational complexities. This paper augments the crowdfunding literature by shedding light on the potential challenges in the fulfilment phase of reward-based crowdfunding campaigns and exploring the impact of project and operational complexities on the crowdfunding campaigns of new technologies. Furthermore, the paper's novelty lies in the unique methodological approach and database construction.