Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SIM Crowd (Social Innovation Matched Crowdfunding (SIM Crowd))
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2021-03-02 do 2022-01-01
The main objective of the proposed project is to conduct an experimental pilot and test the effects of information on additional funding provided by a public funding organisation (FFG) on the funding decision of the audience on crowdfunding platforms, specifically for early phase social innovation projects. A randomised controlled trial (RCT) will be conducted within a particular division of the existing funding scheme “Impact Innovation” called Social Crowdfunding.
Once the design was finalised, we transitioned into the actual implementation of the first RCT. First results indicate that there is no significant difference in an individual’s interest in social innovation crowdfunding campaigns when FFG funding is mentioned or not. Generally, there was overall high interest in the campaigns. No robust results could be derived from the first RCT due to issues with data collection, however, thus a second RCT will be conducted in the 2nd reporting period to determine causal links. The main results from the second RCT show that, overall, financial support from the FFG – in particular seed funding - has positive effects for the CF Campaigns of social innovation projects, however the positive effects are differentiated by gender. When it came to measuring the demonstrated interest, females in seed funding demonstrated significantly more interest than females in the other two groups, whereas there was no statistically significant difference among men in different treatment groups. Furthermore, there is evidence that indicating financial support from the FFG positively affected an individual’s perception of campaign success and project success, although the gender component also played a role here. Specifically, females in the seed group perceived the social innovation projects to be much more likely to succeed in meeting their project goals compared to females in the other two treatment groups and males in the seed group. On the other hand, males in the challenge match funding group perceived the CF campaigns to be more likely to succeed in meeting their campaign targets.
Communication and dissemination activities were targeted at different stakeholders, namely innovation agencies, innovation policy makers, evaluators and researchers, cross-sector activites, and the crowdfunding community. Innovation agencies were generally adressed by having presentations in the FFG and in the TAFTIE Task Force Experiment! as well as creating a new internal process in the FFG for experimentation and RCTs. In addition, innovation policy makers were informed by conducting a workshop and presentation, reaching out to program managers at the FFG and the advisory committee of the General Programmes. Evaluators and researchers could be reached by attending conferences (CODE@MIT, WISE 2021) and a submitted paper to Management Science by our scientific partners UMN as well as a cooperation with the Vienna University of Economics and Business for a master thesis. Furthermore, cross-sector activities encompassed a panel session at the EU industry weeks 2021 and the presentation at the Social Entrepreneurship Network Austria. Finally, we informed the crowdfunding community by giving a presentation to Startnext, our partnering crowdfunding platform, and the FFG submitted a case study to Eurocrowd.