Opening the floodgates: the implications of increasing platform openness in crowdfunding
Opening the floodgates: the implications of increasing platform openness in crowdfunding
复制标题
DOI：
10.1057/s41265-017-0040-z
复制
发表时间：
2017-05
影响因子：
5.6
通讯作者：
Michael Wessel;Ferdinand Thies;Alexander Benlian
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Michael Wessel;Ferdinand Thies;Alexander Benlian
管理平台生态系统需要提供商管理平台边界的渗透性，以便在开放性和控制性之间取得平衡。但是，平台提供商是否值得对第三方产品进行筛选，或者他们应该采取自由放任的方式，让市场决定赢家和输家？在这项研究中，我们比较了世界上最大的众筹平台之一Kickstarter的市场状况，在政策变化之前和之后，放宽了以前对新活动的严格筛选过程。通过分析超过230，000个众筹活动，总资金超过19亿美元，涵盖了政策变化前后的4年时间，我们发现，增加平台开放性对平台生态系统来说是一把双刃剑。虽然Kickstarter的佣金收入在政策变化后激增，因为平台上可用的活动数量增加，但项目创建者和支持者的资金状况恶化。项目创建者不得不科普成功率降低和竞争加剧的问题，这是由于支持者对活动的比例越来越不成比例，而支持者面临更大的不确定性，因为项目创建者在减少信息不对称方面的投资较少。因此，我们从这个自然实验中得到的证据表明，增加平台对第三方产品的开放性可能会破坏平台生态系统的稳定。因此，我们扩展了关于平台开放性和政策变化对平台生态系统的影响的文献。我们的研究结果还为不同的平台利益相关者提供了实际见解，以了解政策变化改变平台开放性时可能引发的“涟漪效应”。
Managing platform ecosystems requires providers to govern the permeability of platform boundaries in order to strike a balance between openness and control. But is it worthwhile for platform providers to conduct screening processes for third-party offerings, or should they rather apply a laissez-faire approach and let the market determine winners and losers? In this study, we compare the market conditions on Kickstarter, one of the world's largest crowdfunding platforms, before and after a policy change that relaxed the previously stringent screening process for new campaigns. By analyzing over 230,000 crowdfunding campaigns with a combined funding of over $1.9 billion that cover a 4-year period around the policy change, we find that increasing platform openness was a double-edged sword for the platform's ecosystem. While Kickstarter's revenue from commissions surged after the policy change due to an increase in the number of campaigns available on the platform, funding conditions for project creators and backers deteriorated. Project creators have to cope with lower success rates and an intensified competition due to a growing disproportion of backers to campaigns, while backers face higher uncertainties as project creators invest less in reducing information asymmetries. Our evidence from this natural experiment therefore suggests that increasing platform openness for third-party offerings can destabilize a platform's ecosystem. We thus extend the literature on platform openness and on the implications of policy changes on platform ecosystems. Our findings also provide practical insights for different platform stakeholders into possible “ripple effects” that are triggered when policy changes alter platform openness.