Essays on Gender in Crowdfunding

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Priscilla Serwaah of the School of Business and Law at the University of Agder has submitted her thesis entitled «Essays on Gender in Crowdfunding» and will defend the thesis for the PhD-degree Thursday 15 September 2022. 

She has followed the PhD programme at the School of Business and Law at the University of Agder.

Read the summary of the thesis by Priscilla Serwaah:

Essays on Gender in Crowdfunding

Females are underrepresented both as fundraisers and funders in financial markets.

As females tend to shape societal norms and conditions with their participation in entrepreneurship, one promising channel for championing female economic empowerment is crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding, through its technological advances, has led innovation in finance and has lowered the threshold for attracting many funders, which means females can participate fully with lower initial capital if they prioritize it.

Despite the emergence of crowdfunding over the past decades, little is known about how it has improved the representation of females in the financial marketplace.

As females tend to invest less compared to their male counterparts in traditional financial market, which indeed is driven by certain factors, the broader research question I address in this dissertation relates to the mechanisms underlying gender differences in funding decisions and behavior in crowdfunding.

This is examined in four studies which are summarized below.

Four studies

The first study reviews previous research works on what influences women’s demand for- and supply of entrepreneurial finance. We find that inconsistent findings in prior studies can be traced to inadequate theoretical foundation. The study highlights the importance of refocusing on subtle factors to uncover obscured relationships.

The second study examines the extent to which crowdfunding has enhanced female financial inclusion and participation by reviewing previous studies in the field. The study’s result points to a general trend where although female participation has not achieved its full potential, it is greater in crowdfunding context than in traditional finance setting.

The third study analyses the gender differences in effects exerted by cognitive factors of crowdfunding contribution intentions in contexts where gender inequality is prevalent.  The results show that females compared to males are more likely to contribute because of social influence and shared similarities with the fundraisers.

The fourth study identifies the pervasiveness of gender differences and examine whether they apply in a gender equal society, where dissimilar life experiences or socialization should be minimal and how this can affect crowdfunding contributions. The results show that females are more likely to contribute because of shared similarities whereas males tend to contribute because of altruism. However, the likelihood to contribute because of self-efficacy does not vary between both females and males.

Implications

Overall, this dissertation has useful and novel implications for practice and society in general.

The study provides evidence for context-contingent effects of gender in funding decisions.

Since the path to financial inclusion is active market participation, the study may also inform platform operators’ service and feature design of crowdfunding in developing contexts, while aiming to enhance female participation in crowdfunding markets.

Disputation facts: 

The trial lecture and the public defence will take place in Auditorium B3 007, Campus Kristiansand and online via the Zoom conferencing app - registration link below.

Head of Department Bjørn-Tore Flåten, Department of Management, School of Business and Law at the University, will chair the disputation.

The trial lecture Thursday 15 September at 11:00 hours

Public defense Thursday 15 September at 12:30 hours

 

Given topic for trial lecture: «Throughout your dissertation you address the issue of risk aversiveness among women and how this influences their decision making. You use studies such as by Charnessa and Gneezy, 2012; Chen et al., 2016; Powell and Ansic, 1997, who all argue that women are more risk averse than men. However, recent literature published on this topic finds that the relationship between risk aversiveness and gender is more complex than accepted previously. Can you address this issue when examining investors and entrepreneurs? How can the participation of minorities in general, not specifically women, be increased in the demand and supply of entrepreneurial finance?»

Thesis Title: «Essays on Gender in Crowdfunding»

Search for the thesis in AURA - Agder University Research Archive, a digital archive of scientific papers, theses and dissertations from the academic staff and students at the University of Agder.

The thesis is available here:

PhD Thesis_Priscilla Serwaah_print

 

The Candidate: Priscilla Serwaah (1991, Kumasi/Ghana) BSc from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana and MSc from the University of Agder (2017). Title of the Master Thesis: «The impact of private equity on firms in emerging markets: evidence from Ghana». Present position: Research Assistant at the School of Business and Law at UiA. 

Opponents:

First opponent:  Professor Tamar Almor, Colman College of Management, Israel

Second opponent: Associate Professor Friedemann Polzin, Utrecht University, Nederland

Professor Sangeeta Singh, University of Agder, is appointed as the administrator for the assessment committee.

Supervisor in the doctoral work was Professor Rotem Shneor, University of Agder.

What to do as an online audience member:

The disputation is open to the public, but to follow the trial lecture and the public defence digitally, transmitted via the Zoom conferencing app, you have to register as an audience member on this link:

https://uiano.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5YrdeGgpzooGdU_4kwltIN-pspLB0Ahv4vb

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We ask online audience members to join the virtual trial lecture at 10:50 at the earliest and the public defense at 12:20 at the earliest. After these times, you can leave and rejoin the meeting at any time. Further, we ask online audience members to turn off their microphone and camera and keep them turned off throughout the event. You do this at the bottom left of the image when in Zoom. We recommend you use ‘Speaker view’. You select that at the top right corner of the video window when in Zoom.

Opponent ex auditorio:

The chair invites members of the public to pose questions ex auditorio in the introduction to the public defense. Deadline is during the break between the two opponents. The person asking questions should have read the thesis. For online audience the Contact Persons e-mail are available in the chat function during the Public Defense, and questions ex auditorio can be submitted to Gunvor Guttormsen on e-mail gunvor.guttormsen@uia.no