关键词: 众筹, 本地偏好, 融资绩效, 投资意愿, Kickstarter

Abstract: The rise of online financing has contributed to the prosperity of crowdfunding market. Investors' participation in a crowdfunding project is influenced not only by economic factors, but also by psychological factors. Among these factors, home bias is one of the factors. Investors' preference for local resources has been proven to be widespread in many other industries, but there is a lack of in-depth discussion in the area of crowdfunding filed. Home bias is often found in traditional transactions, leading the locations of buyers and sellers to converge. However, as the informationpresentation and the investment of crowdfunding campaigns are usually accomplished online, the crowdfunding theoreticallybreaks the limitation of geographical space, and home bias may not be significantly. To verify the home bias in online financing, we proposed the following three questions:(1) Is there any home bias in the crowdfunding market? And what is the difference between home bias at different levels? (2) The impact of home bias on investment behavior and pledge results; (2) How to explain the home bias of investors? We investigate Kickstarter by empirical models, we established the models of home bias incountry-level, regional-level and micro-level respectively. The key equations, such as c=sin(LatA)*sin(LatB)*cos(LonA-LonB)+cos(LatA)*cos(LatB) and Distance=Arccos(c)*R*Pi/180 are employed to calculated the distance between the fundraisers and the backers. At the meantime, dyadic analysis model is employed to estimate the economic impact of home bias on the pledged results, and the main model is prob(Investor_i backs Founder_j)=β*SamePlace_ij+f(InvestorInfo_i,FounderInfo_j,ProjectInfo)+ε_ij. The following process is followed to solve the problem:first, whether there is conclusive evidence of home bias in crowdsourcing investment behavior is examined; then, if there is home bias unequivocally, what is the impact of hoe bias on crowdfunding financing results? Will home bias promote financing success or vice versa? Finally, the home bias in online financing for the psychology, behavior and economics perspectives is explained. The results of our study indicate that home bias is in crowdfunding investment exactly, but showing diverse patterns among different levels and projects. Drama projects are the most influenced by home bias, followed by food projects, while the game projects are the least impacted by home bias. A superimposed effect of home bias in crowdfunding is also shown, for example, the founder is able togain the support from investors of both areas when the campaign is launched outside the hometown, thus, obtaininghigher success ratio. For the distance between the investors and the founders, the average distance of drama projects is the shortest at 1474km, while the largest distance is found in game projects, which reached 4624km. The research of Internet financial and behavior pattern is enriched, and new perspectives for researches and practices in crowdfunding are provided. It is demonstrated that home bias exist and play a role in online financing, which makes up for the deficiency of existing theoretical research. In addition to E-commerce and other trading areas, the investors in online financing will also consider the geographical location of the project, and we set a fire for future theoretical research and practice.

Key words: crowd funding, home bias, funding result, investment intention, kickstarter