Kickstart or jumpstart? Understanding women entrepreneurs’ crowdfunding performance

This chapter examines the role of women entrepreneurs’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy, entrepreneurial passion and prior experience on their crowdfunding performance. Drawing on the growing literature on crowdfunding, self-efficacy, passion and learning, the authors develop a theoretical framework identifying factors that influence women entrepreneurs’ crowdfunding performance. They test their assertions using a sample of 197 female-led projects on the Kickstarter platform. The results confirm that women entrepreneurs’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy, entrepreneurial passion and prior experience are associated with their projects’ crowdfunding performance. The chapter contributes to the literature on entrepreneurial finance, crowdfunding, venture financing, behavioral strategy and entrepreneurship.