The bulk of today's (“preorder-,” “reward-,” “gift-,” and “donation-based”) crowdfunding raises funds for small, private entrepreneurial ventures without granting funders private claims to the projects’ income or the ability to guarantee the realization and delivery of project outcomes. We theorize and show empirically – via a mixed-method approach applied to a representative and remarkably informative case – that the payoff structure for crowdfunders, akin to a public good contribution problem, leads to the tangible value of main project outputs exerting little influence on contributions to crowdfunding. This then raises the question of which funder motivations fund seekers may have to address to crowdfund their projects. We demonstrate the especially large role of non-pecuniary motivations and pinpoint three particular motivations that profit-seeking entrepreneurs may stimulate to be financed through crowdfunding. The findings hold important implications for entrepreneurs’ crowdfunding strategies, platform design, and our understanding of how this funding institution works in general. The study also adds to emerging research on the implications of the public good nature of crowdfunding.

当今的大部分众筹（“预购”，“奖励”，“礼物”和“基于捐赠”）为小型，私人创业企业筹集资金，却没有授予资助者私人对项目收入或能力的要求。保证项目成果的实现和交付。我们通过适用于代表性且非常有益的案例的混合方法理论化和经验性地表明，类似于公共利益贡献问题的众筹者的回报结构导致主要项目产出的有形价值对贡献几乎没有影响进行众筹。这就提出了一个问题，即寻求资金的人可能需要解决哪些筹资者的动机才能对他们的项目进行众筹。我们展示了非金钱动机的特别重要的作用，并指出了寻求利润的企业家可能会通过众筹筹集资金的三种特定动机。这些发现对企业家的众筹策略，平台设计以及我们对这家融资机构总体运作方式的理解具有重要意义。该研究还增加了关于众筹的公共善性含义的新兴研究。