Untangling the influence of perceived sustainability orientation on value-co-creation behavior in crowdfunding process: investigating a mediation model

Purpose Sustainability-oriented projects are prevalent on crowdfunding platforms nowadays. The relationship between crowdfunding and sustainability has attracted the attention of many scholars. This study aims to examine the effects of perceived sustainability orientation on value-co-creation behavior from the perspective of backers and explore the mediation effects of three psychological factors: perceived affective reaction, perceived self-effectiveness and perceived risk. Design/methodology/approach The study recruits 455 backers to evaluate 100 projects on a crowdfunding platform. Structural equation modeling based on partial least squares is used to analyze data and test the hypotheses. Findings The results show that perceived sustainability orientation influences value-co-creation behavior through perceived affective reaction and self-effectiveness. Furthermore, perceived sustainability orientation impacts participation behavior through perceived risk. Research limitations/implications Our study mainly focuses on sustainability-oriented and reward-based crowdfunding projects. Future research can examine other types of projects and other crowdfunding platforms. Practical implications These findings can provide implications for project creators to improve the values co-created with backers in future sustainability-oriented projects. Furthermore, the findings can provide implications for backers and help them evaluate crowdfunding projects. Originality/value The existing studies are mostly concerned with project creators’ perspectives. This paper is one of the few to investigate how a project’s sustainability orientation influences backers’ psychological factors and value-co-creation behavior.