A Study on the Effects of Crowdfunding Values on the Intention to Visit Local Festivals: Focusing on Mediating Effects of Perceived Risk and e-WOM

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting paper to read. It is written in a clear and appropriate English. Generally speaking, it makes a good impression. However, as the authors admit to being a limitation, «Respondents to this study experienced indirect festival crowdfunding only through experimental treatment provided by the researcher. Therefore, the validity of the survey in this study is likely to be low» (page 13, lines 492-494). In fact, the sample on which this study is based is artificial, i.e. the respondents were no film festival visitors. Instead, they were prepared by the researchers to be able to answer a questionnaire as explained on page 7, lines 328-331: «To help understand film festival crowdfunding, participants reviewed the crowdfunding content uploaded to Tumblbug, which is a leading crowdfunding platform in Korea. Specifically,  before responding to the questionnaire, participants read information about film festival crowdfunding, fundraising, and benefits from participating in the crowdfunding». The same questionnaire applied to real participants would have probably produced different results. Therefore, this paper seems to be a good research exercise, but one should be careful with results, as their reliability is low. It is therefore advisable that this study is replicated in the real world with a real sample because otherwise, the whole paper is correct.

Most references are old, and only a few are from the last three years. You could refresh the paper with a few more recent references. For instance, for section 2.4 (Perceived risk) I would suggest to read and cite a recent article which uses Perceived Risk as a key variable: Gemar, Soler & Melendez (2019). Analysis of intention to purchase travel on the Web. Tourism & Management Studies, 15(1), 23-33.

As said before, English is correct. The only mistake I've found was in Table 2 (page 9) «crowdfunding will offers value for money». It is very easy to correct.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is dealing with an interesting topic such as crowdfunding values. 

Since marketing channels has been diverse due to the advance of IT the crowdfunding could be a good way for attracting festival goers. However, the overall research design needs to be improved.

I would like to raise some suggestions.

1. Introduction
   - In line 74-76, the author stated “… the framework was not based on theories.” What does that mean? If then, why you use a research method of SEM which is suitable to confirm/test a theory-based model?
2. Literature review
   - please focus on e-WOM in tourism and festival or in cultural goods or services rather than general WOM. General WOM has different characteristics from e-WOM, and e-WOM in general goods could be also different from one of tourism and services. It would be better to address hypotheses focusing on specific contexts according to the research subject.
   - When you write WOM please specify it is WOM or e-WOM through the whole paper.
3. Research methods
   - Please provide operational definitions of constructs.
   - There is no explanation of analysis under 3.2. Measurement and Analysis Method. Please include analysis.
4. Results
   - page 11, Table 6 should be Table 4.
   - The author hypothesized SV negatively affects PR (H1-3). But the result showed the positive relationship. We cannot say the hypothesis H1-3 was supported.
   - I would like to suggest using ‘not supported’ instead of ‘rejected’.
5. Discussion and Conclusion
   - There are many mistakes explaining the results. For example, line 416 on page 12 says emotional values positively affected e-WOM (H2-4). This hypothesis was not supported according to Table 4. As well, Social values had a negative effect on perceived risk (H1-3) (p. 12). However, it is not true.
   - The authors provided previous studies in order to support the results or compare the results with others. However, the relevance of literature the authors stated is doubtful. For example, McKee et al. (2006) studied only economic value and confirmed that economic value positively affects intention to use WOM in the context of a group health care plan. McKee et al.’s study cannot support the results of this study since hypothesis of EV on e-WOM was not supported and it cannot be extended to other hypotheses. I don’t understand what aspects of McKee et al.’s study can support your research.
   - Some explanation of the results should be reconsidered (i.e., line 430-435, line 457-459, line 468-470, line 472-473).
   - In line 460, the authors stated “a general study reported that attitudes towards crowdfunding affect the intention of crowdfunding behavior.” what do you mean by general study? I don’t see related literature focusing on crowdfunding regarding H5 and H6.
   - in line 471-472, the authors stated “we … found that the influence of these factors is somewhat different than indicated by the existing crowdfunding research.” Please fully provide related existing crowdfunding research.
   - I wonder why your explanation suddenly moves to attitudes on discussion.

Followings are main concerns.

First, please improve the validity of research model and constructs.

Main constructs of this paper are perceived values, innovativeness, perceived risk, e-WOM, and intention to visit.

1. As for inner innovativeness, it is one of personal characteristics which affect e-WOM. That means there are many other personal characteristics, and as the authors stated, innovativeness affecting WOM could be multi-dimensional such as social and cognitive innovativeness. However, the author did not clearly show the relevance of adopting one-dimensional innovativeness based on the acceptance of new technologies. I assume the authors see crowdfunding is a new technology. Many questions arise. Can we say accepting a new technology is same as accepting new media channel? Can we give some meaningful insight with only one aspect of innovativeness or one aspect of personal characteristics without considering others confirmed by previous studies? Then the author should clearly state why they do this.
2. As for perceived risk, this is one of weak points. The authors did not consider the unique characteristics of crowdfunding and did not show operational definition of perceived risk. First, provide why the authors consider only economical/financial risk (do not just say the fact that at least this variable is applied in most of previous studies, p. 6). In festival crowdfunding, people might choose a festival which they think it is worth to visit or the festival itself is meaningful and valuable. The first case is rather buying tickets or related goods, and the other case is giving funds for the success of the festival. In the decision whether to give funds or not, one of perceived risks could be economic risk. However, since it is not just immediately buying a good, people may consider whether the funding project will succeed or not, whether the project is worthy enough. Therefore, the perceived risk should consider other aspects of risks especially related to cultural products or crowdfunding.
   Since the hypothesis 5 is the relationship between perceived risk and the intention to visit, perceived economic risk is not only buying a ticket or some goods in crowdfunding. Festival participation is a complex product with consumption of food and beverage, accommodation, transportation, etc. The authors ignore economic risk related to other expenditures.
3. In addition, the decision process of participating in crowdfunding would be several steps. Fist people might consider values of the funding. Second, they choose whether they can visit or they want to visit, and then if they can go and want, they will participate in crowdfunding. However, although they cannot visit, they would participate in crowdfunding when they feel the level of perceived values are high. In this perspective I wonder why the authors see the relationship between risk and the intention to visit not participating crowdfunding. In this perspective, I wonder why the authors chose the intention to visit not participating crowdfunding.
4. If the author agree I think it is meaningful to include the relationship between perceived risk and intention to use e-WOM.

Second, I doubt the relevance of the measurement of some variables used here.

I don’t think that the measurements of variables do specifically fit into the research subject of crowdfunding. That would lead the unexpected results of the study. For example, when you think of innovativeness in crowdfunding as a new medium, that could be like that “I like to try new kind of digital media when I buy goods/services.” However, the items measuring inner innovativeness here focuses on general new ideas and new technologies.

The measurement of perceived risk is same in terms of missing the consideration of study subject – crowdfunding and festival.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors of the paper investigate the role of crowdfunding as a success factor for festivals. Their approach is exciting as they examine the economic, emotional, social, altruistic and inner innovativeness effects of crowdfunding on film festivals. The use of perceived risk and e-WOM as mediating variables enhances the interests of the research. Nonetheless, in the introduction, there are not enough arguments supporting their approach, and it would be nice to present possible theoretical gaps or similar research.
Literature review and Methodology are thorough enough while the results are very clearly displayed.
The results indicate that innovativeness does not have a mediating role but crowdfunding can also serve as a marketing tool. The existence of the implications and limitations section could enhance the reading experience.

Moreover minor issues:

• The citation “Featherman and Pavlou (2003)” is not consistent throughout the paper.
• The title of Hoksbergen & Insch (2016) paper in the bibliography should be corrected.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for your time to revise the manuscript. I am glad that the authors agreed to my comments and many of comments that I suggested were accepted and revised. 

However, I think the main problems with research design still remained and some of your revisions need to be improved. 

Unfortunately, it is hard to figure out which one is revision and deletion in the revised manuscript. I don't know what the problem is. I would like to ask to improve some parts. 

In introduction, the authors changed the purpose of the study, but the logical consistency lacks. I think there are two points to address this study by authors based on you revision of introduction. One is the mediating role of e-WOM, the other is the role of new medium-crowdfunding. The authors mixed up these two points. Please make it more clearly and consistently. 

I don't think the following phrase in conclusion is adequate since I think the main weakness of this study is the measurement the study used.

"We suggest that a replication study be conducted, using the same questionnaires that we used to verify the validity  of our survey."(p. 16) 

Thank you for your efforts.

Author Response

"Please see the attachment." 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf