Feature Voting and the Success of Crowdfunded Projects

Abstract

Crowdfunding is an increasingly prominent phenomenon in today’s world. One of the selling points of crowdfunding is the ability of funders to give project input, often in the form of voting on features for a project they support. Whether or not this type of feature voting significantly affects the success of projects is an open question. This study examines that question using a large sample of projects from the prominent crowdfunding site Kickstarter. The results suggest that, although common, project feature voting does not significantly predict crowdfunded projects’ success.