Modeling Kickstarter as a Two-Player Four-Strategy Game: An Analytical Approach

Abstract

Kickstarter represents one of the most successful examples of crowdfunding. It can be interpreted as a strategic game with two types of players: backers invest their resources to get a reward and campaign promoters aim to collect a specific amount to commercialize a good. We had developed an analytical model and an agent-based model where these two representative players play the game adopting one of four different strategies we used to profile both types of actors. We show that this approach allows us to capture a big part of the intrinsic characteristics of Kickstarter by modeling some of the dynamics tipical of the real system and capturing intersting equilibria. The models we develop can be used, on one hand, to better understand the dynamics of Kickstarter and the resulting equilibria; on the other hand, it can be used to run what-if analysis about the effects of backers and campaign promoters adopting specific strategies.