Crowdfunding has emerged as an alternative means of financing new ventures by utilizing the financial support of a large group of individual investors. In this research, we ask a novel question: does being crowdfunded carry any signal value for the broader market of observing consumers? Seven studies reveal a consumer preference for “crowdfunded products”, even after controlling for a product’s objective product characteristics. We identify two inferences that help explain this effect: (1) consumers perceive crowdfunded products to be of higher quality, and (2) they believe that supporting crowdfunding reduces inequality in the marketplace. We further document an important boundary condition of the first inference: our identified effect reverses in high risk domains (e.g., products that involve high physical risk), due to consumer perceptions that the crowdfunding model lacks sufficient professionalism to mitigate risk. With regard to the second inference, we find that the positive crowdfunding effect is particularly strong among consumers who value social equality. Taken together, our work sheds new light on consumer perceptions of crowdfunding, elucidates why and when consumers prefer crowdfunded products, and offers actionable implications for managers.

通过利用一大批个人投资者的资金支持，众筹已成为一种为新企业筹集资金的替代方法。在这项研究中，我们提出了一个新的问题：众筹对观察消费者的更广泛市场是否具有任何信号价值？七项研究表明，即使在控制了产品的客观产品特性之后，消费者还是喜欢“众筹产品”。我们确定两个可以帮助解释这种影响的推论：（1）消费者认为众筹产品的质量更高；（2）他们认为支持众筹可以减少市场上的不平等现象。我们进一步记录了第一个推论的重要边界条件：在高风险领域（例如，涉及高物理风险的产品），我们确定的影响会逆转，由于消费者认为众筹模式缺乏足够的专业知识来减轻风险。关于第二个推论，我们发现积极的众筹效果在重视社会平等的消费者中尤为明显。综上所述，我们的工作为消费者对众筹的理解提供了新的视角，阐明了为什么以及何时消费者更喜欢众筹产品，并为管理人员提供了可操作的含义。