Gender homophily and local bias in equity crowdfunding

Dandan Wang () and Jörg Prokop ()
Additional contact information
Dandan Wang: Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg
Jörg Prokop: Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg

Small Business Economics, 2025, vol. 64, issue 3, No 1, 805-836

Abstract: Abstract We investigate gender-specific local biases among investors in equity crowdfunding. Based on data from a major German crowdfunding platform, we find that domestic investors favour ventures that are geographically closer to their own place of residence. This bias is particularly evident among female investors, although it is partially offset by gender homophily, whereby female investors favour companies with women in the top management team. Finally, we show that the introduction of the German Small Investor Protection Act may have exacerbated local biases in the German crowdfunding market, particularly with respect to firms with female management. Overall, our results suggest that establishing their companies in close proximity to a large number of potential female crowd investors may help improve female entrepreneurs’ chances of attracting equity crowdfunding investment.

Keywords: Equity crowdfunding; Local bias; Venture financing; Geographical distance; Female entrepreneur; Gender effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 G11 G41 J16 O16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11187-024-00949-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:sbusec:v:64:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s11187-024-00949-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-024-00949-5

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().