Equity crowdfunding across borders: a conjoint experiment

The purpose of this paper is to identify and disentangle the home bias in equity crowdfunding to better understand irrational decision making of investors.

A first choice-based conjoint (CBC) experiment with 217 participants was conducted in central Europe in order to single out different factors contributing to an apparent home bias of capital providers.

The authors find that investors show an avoidance of foreign currency, while payment methods seem to have no considerable influence on the decision making. Furthermore, participants significantly decided against national legislation in favor for EU legislation.

This study predominantly helps to gain deeper insights into influencing factors in crowdfunding markets with a special concern on a cross-border context. For capital-seeking companies, the home bias of potential investor has to be taken into account, when designing a crowdfunding campaign. For legislators, the apparent influence of the legal framework should serve as a wake-up call to consolidate the regulation of crowdfunding in the EU.

This is the first CBC experiment application in a cross-border crowdfunding context. It provides deeper understanding of the importance of geographical proximity between crowdfunding projects and investors and calls for further research to examine how such an effect could be diminished.