Crowdfunding for Sustainability: A Study on the Potential of Reward-based Crowdfunding in Supporting Sustainable Entrepreneurship

The dissertation sets out to explore the often ignored role of the consumer (end-user) within sustainable innovation by examining the potential of reward-based crowdfunding in enabling sustainable entrepreneurship. It explores under which conditions and to what extent rewardbased crowdfunding could benefit entrepreneurs with social and/or environmentally-oriented products. The dissertation employs four articles in order to explore this. The first sets the stage by systematically reviewing the various roles that end-users can adopt within sustainable innovation process. The second serves to present a conceptual understanding of how the process of crowdfunding is organized. Finally papers three and four respectively present the dissertation’s empirical evidence. Paper three focuses on uncovering the distributive qualities of reward-based crowdfunding in terms of its ability to increase innovation finance access, while paper four introduces the experimental evidence on the role of individual and product details in shaping pledging behavior as it relates to a diversity of (un)sustainable campaigns.