The Role of Awareness in Crowdfunding Campaigns: The Empirical Evidence for the Caribbean

Author
Date issued
Aug 2017
Crowdfunding is a financial alternative that has exhibited sustainable growth over the past decade. Further, it has been positioned as a promising mechanism for LAC countries to improve their financial conditions. Therefore, regional governments need to understand the key enablers of crowdfunding to foster this financial alternative. The main objectives of this report are to identify the key conditions that should be present in a country and to assess the current status of crowdfunding in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. To accomplish this, we designed a model based on current state-of-the-art techniques for this field and tested it with data retrieved from 718,264 crowdfunding campaigns from 2013 through 2015. The main results are that social media engagement and the reliability of the associated e-commerce are key enablers of crowdfunding. These results provide useful insights for policymakers in developing countries