Sunil Wattal

An Empirical Examination of the Antecedents and Consequences of Contribution Patterns in Crowd-Funded Markets

Crowd-funded markets have recently emerged as a novel source of capital for entrepreneurs. As the economic potential of these markets is now being realized, they are beginning to go mainstream, a trend reflected by the explicit attention crowdfunding has received in the American Jobs Act as a potential avenue for economic growth, as well as the recent focus that regulators such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission have placed upon it. Although the formulation of regulation and policy surrounding crowd-funded markets is becoming increasingly important, the behavior of crowdfunders, an important aspect that must be considered in this formulation effort, is not yet well understood. A key factor that can influence the behavior of crowd funders is information on prior contribution behavior, including the amount and timing of others’ contributions, which is published for general consumption. With that in mind, in this study, we empirically examine social influence in a crowd-funded marketplace for online journalism projects, employing a unique data set that incorporates contribution events and Web traffic statistics for approximately 100 story pitches. This data set allows us to examine both the antecedents and consequences of the contribution process. First, noting that digital journalism is a form of public good, we evaluate the applicability of two competing classes of economic models that explain private contribution toward public goods in the presence of social information: substitution models and reinforcement models. We also propose a new measure that captures both the amount and the timing of others’ contribution behavior: contribution frequency (dollars per unit time). We find evidence in support of a substitution model, which suggests a partial crowding-out effect, where contributors may experience a decrease in their marginal utility from making a contribution as it becomes less important to the recipient. Further, we find that the duration of funding and, more importantly, the degree of exposure that a pitch receives over the course of the funding process, are positively associated with readership upon the story’s publication. This appears to validate the widely held belief that a key benefit of the crowdfunding model is the potential it offers for awareness and attention-building around causes and ventures. This last aspect is a major contribution of the study, as it demonstrates a clear linkage between marketing effort and the success of crowd-funded projects.

Web 2.0 and politics: the 2008 u.s. presidential election and an E-politics research agenda

The Internet was a major factor in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign and has become an important tool for political communication and persuasion. Yet, information systems research is generally silent on the role of the Internet in politics. In this paper, we argue that IS is positioned to enhance understanding of the influence of the Internet on politics, and, more specifically, the process of election campaigning using Internet-based technologies such as Web 2.0. In this paper, we discuss how these technologies can change the nature of competition in politics and replace or complement traditional media. Our empirical study on how Web 2.0 technologies were used by the candidates leading up to the 2008 U.S. presidential primaries sheds light on how these technologies influenced candidate performance. Finally, we outline a research agenda highlighting where IS can contribute to the academic discourse on e-politics.

The hidden cost of accommodating crowdfunder privacy preferences: a randomized field experiment

Online crowdfunding has received a great deal of attention as a promising avenue to fostering entrepreneurship and innovation. Because online settings bring increased visibility and traceability of transactions, many crowdfunding platforms provide mechanisms that enable a campaign contributor to conceal his or her identity or contribution amount from peers. We study the impact of these information (privacy) control mechanisms on crowdfunder behavior. Employing a randomized experiment at one of the world’s largest online crowdfunding platforms, we find evidence of both positive (e.g., comfort) and negative (e.g., privacy priming) causal effects. We find that reducing access to information controls induces a net increase in fundraising, yet this outcome results from two competing influences — treatment increases willingness to engage with the platform (a 4.9% increase in the probability of contribution) and simultaneously decreases the average contribution (a U.S.

Show Me the Way to Go Home: An Empirical Investigation of Ride-Sharing and Alcohol Related Motor Vehicle Fatalities

5.81 decline). This decline derives from a publicity effect, wherein contributors respond to a lack of privacy by tempering extreme contributions. We unravel the causal mechanisms that drive the results and discuss the implications of our findings for the design of online platforms.

Employee Adoption of Corporate Blogs: A Quantitative Analysis

In this work, we investigate how the entry of ride-sharing services influences the rate of alcohol related motor vehicle fatalities. While significant debate has surrounded ride-sharing, limited empirical work has been devoted to uncovering the societal benefits of such services (or the mechanisms which drive these benefits). Using a difference in difference approach to exploit a natural experiment, the entry of Uber Black and Uber X into California markets between 2009 and 2014, we find a significant drop in the rate of fatalities after the introduction of Uber X. Further, results suggest that not all services have the same effect, insofar as the effect of the Uber Black car service is intermittent and manifests only in selective locations (i.e., large cities). These results underscore the importance of coupling increased availability with cost savings in order to exploit the public welfare gains offered by the sharing economy. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

What's in a “Name”? Impact of Use of Customer Information in E-Mail Advertisements

A new form of computer mediated communication that promises to revolutionize the way organizations communicate is internal corporate blogs. However, the academic literature on this relatively new phenomenon is limited. In this study, we apply the traditional theories of technology adoption and innovation diffusion to examine the role of socio-demographic characteristics and social networks in blog adoption by employees in a large multi-national corporation. The results indicate that individual characteristics such as age are negatively correlated with adoption, while there is no significant impact of gender. At the same time, managerial influences and usage in spatial networks explain much of the variance in adoption. We elaborate on the significance of these findings, and discuss future research plans in this direction.

Secret Admirers: An Empirical Examination of Information Hiding and Contribution Dynamics in Online Crowdfunding

In this study, we examine how consumers respond to firms’ use of two types of information for personalization: product preferences and name. We collect a unique data set of over 10 million e-mail advertisements sent by a website to over 600,000 customers who could buy the advertised products from the online merchant. We estimate a two-stage hierarchical model using Bayesian analysis to account for observable and unobservable consumer heterogeneity. Our analysis suggests several interesting results regarding consumers’ responses to firms’ use of information. When firms use product-based personalization (where the use of information is not explicitly mentioned), consumers respond positively. On the other hand, consumers respond negatively when firms are explicit in their use of personally identifiable information (i.e., a personalized greeting). We also find that negative responses to personalized greetings are moderated by consumers’ familiarity with firms. The main contribution of this study is that it not only indicates the economic benefits of personalization in e-mails but also highlights consumers’ concerns over the use of information in personalization.

Determinants of Mode of Innovation in IT Firms

Individuals’ actions in online social contexts are growing increasingly visible and traceable. Many online platforms account for this by providing users with granular control over when and how their identity or actions are made visible to peers. However, little work has sought to understand the effect that a user’s decision to conceal information might have on observing peers, who are likely to refer to that information when deciding on their own actions. We leverage a unique impression-level dataset from one of the worlds largest online crowdfunding platforms, where contributors are given the option to conceal their username or contribution amount from public display, with each transaction. We demonstrate that when campaign contributors elect to conceal information, it has a negative influence on subsequent visitors’ likelihood of conversion, as well as on their average contributions, conditional on conversion. Moreover, we argue that social norms are an important driver of information concealment, providing evidence of peer influence in the decision to conceal. We discuss the implications of our results for the provision of online information hiding mechanisms, as well as the design of crowdfunding platforms and electronic markets more generally.

An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Software Vulnerability Announcements on Firm Stock Price

In the research, we investigate the role of diversification in the type of innovation strategy followed by incumbent firms in the IT industry. We setup a two-stage game theoretic model where, in the first stage, the incumbent decides whether to invest in R&D or acquire a pre-emptive stake in the entrant. In the second stage, the incumbent decides whether or not to acquire a successful entrant. Our main result is that a more diversified incumbent is more likely to invest in acquisition than engage in R&D. We also collect data on financial indicators for firms in the IT industry using the Compustat database to empirically test our main result. Our empirical model confirms our proposition that firms with a degree of diversification are more likely to innovate through acquisition than through R&D.