Should subscription-based content creators display their earnings on crowdfunding platforms? Evidence from Patreon

Paul Crosby and Jordi Mckenzie ()

Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 2021, vol. 16, issue C

Abstract: In January 2017, the subscription-based crowdfunding platform Patreon allowed their users (creators) the ability to hide their earnings from existing and potential subscribers. Prior to this, all monthly earnings were visible. We investigate what effect this policy change had on creators’ subscriber numbers over the following six months. Using double-robust and endogenous treatment estimation techniques, we find evidence that creators who removed the visibility of their earnings had more subscribers as a result. This suggests that the provision of social information does not lead to an increase in subscribers.

Keywords: Crowdfunding; Patreon; Entrepreneurship; Natural experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L26 L82 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352673421000421
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobuve:v:16:y:2021:i:c:s2352673421000421

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbvi.2021.e00264

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Venturing Insights is currently edited by Dimo Dimov

More articles in Journal of Business Venturing Insights from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().