Characteristics of On-time and Late Reward Delivery Projects

Abstract: The crowdfunding market size has increased exponentially, reaching tens of billions of dollars and showing the popularity of crowdfunding. However, according to Kickstarter, 35% backers did not receive rewards on time. To maintain the trust between creators and backers, and sustain the crowdfunding business growth, it is crucial to understand how on-time and late reward delivery projects are different. In this paper, we analyze characteristics of on-time and late reward delivery projects, especially, focusing on project descriptions, creator profiles, and activeness and linguistic patterns of creators and backers. Our analysis reveals that the less complicated a project is and more actively a creator responds to backers, the higher an on-time reward delivery probability is. It shows there are significant differences between on-time and late reward delivery projects.