Who Can Survive in an ICT-Enabled Crowdfunding Platform?

The importance of socio-technical ecosystems is growing due to the emergence of technology-based platform businesses. However, few researchers have offered theoretical explanations of this phenomenon drawing on the ecosystem perspective. Existing studies on ecosystems have been limited to either natural or social ecosystems and have examined ecosystems as a whole. This study focuses on the survival and evolution of individual participants in the socio-technical ecosystem of a crowdfunding platform. It is hypothesized that adaptability (i.e., intra-role and inter-role exchange) and relationality (i.e., feedback and feed-forward interactivity) are positively related to the amount of funding received and the likelihood of campaign success. Empirical results from regression analysis show that the quality of intra-role and inter-role exchanges determine their influence on funding success. High relationality has a significant, positive influence on the funding received by a campaign. With this insight, this paper lays the groundwork for expanding theoretical research on socio-technical ecosystems.