Online crowdfunding has become a popular mechanism for creative projects that are not suitable for traditional financing means. Interestingly, creators on crowdfunding platforms frequently embark on projects beyond their prior expertise. In this study, we investigate how fundraising performance affects a creator's decision to venture into (i.e., explore) new project categories. Leveraging data from Kickstarter, we unveil a “V-shaped” relationship between creators’ funding attainment discrepancy (the gap between realized and target performance) and their tendency to explore novel project categories. Our finding challenges the conventional assumption that exceeding target performance would inhibit exploratory behavior. In addition, we show that when the attainment discrepancy transitions from negative to positive, the probability of exploration exhibits a discontinuous dip.

中文翻译：

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迈向新领域：成就差异如何影响众筹中的探索行为


在线众筹已成为不适合传统融资方式的创意项目的流行机制。有趣的是，众筹平台上的创作者经常着手从事超出他们先前专业知识的项目。在这项研究中，我们调查了筹款表现如何影响创作者涉足（即探索）新项目类别的决定。利用来自 Kickstarter 的数据，我们揭示了创作者的融资成就差异（已实现和目标绩效之间的差距）与他们探索新项目类别的倾向之间的“V 形”关系。我们的发现挑战了超过目标性能会抑制探索行为的传统假设。此外，我们还表明，当成绩差异从负转换为正时，探索的概率表现出不连续的下降。