Investors’ acceptance and use of investment-based crowdfunding platforms: an integrated perspective

Abstract

Investment-based crowdfunding platforms (IBCP) have revolutionized the financial landscape by providing viable investment opportunities for non-institutional investors. Nonetheless, only a limited amount of attention has been focused on the factors that shape investors’ adoption of these platforms. Therefore, we primarily explore investors’ adoption of IBCP by employing an integrated model combining the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) and the Task-technology Fit model (TTF) while incorporating network externalities and trust. Drawing on a sample of current IBCP investors (n = 303), we found that investors’ behavioural intentions and use behaviour can be explained by performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, habit, network externalities, trust and the TTF. The integrated model explained a higher variance in the endogenous variables than the two baseline models. We contribute to the emerging literature by delivering a new integrated model and provide platform operators with valuable insights into encouraging investors’ adoption behaviour.