Sponsor's cocreation and psychological ownership in reward-based crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is a new financing channel for small and medium-sized enterprises and individual entrepreneurs to raise funds for innovation projects online. In reward-based crowdfunding, project sponsors invest money and receive rewards as a return. They may also participate in product development and project implementation as value cocreators. This paper investigates how sponsors' cocreation behaviours lead to their generation of psychological ownership in the crowdfunding projects. The research model was developed, and data were collected from sponsors on Zhongchou (), a well-known crowdfunding platform in China. The results indicated that psychological ownership is an important mental state for sponsors in crowdfunding, which significantly affects their commitment to projects. We also identified the important routes to sponsor psychological ownership in crowdfunding: perceived control and intimate knowing, through which sponsors' cocreation significantly influences the emergence of psychological ownership. The effects of cocreation process are moderated by 2 important factors: entrepreneur activeness, and sponsor's social connection, in the crowdfunding projects. This paper contributes to crowdfunding research and has practical implications for crowdfunding projects and platforms.