Motives

Following the research question, the aim of the analysis was to find out why research-ers in Germany use crowdfunding. Several questions in the Interview Guide addressed this topic. The answers show that the reasons are diverse, with two motives standing out: Raising Awareness and the Expansion of the Network.

Raising (public) Awareness

The Raising Awareness motive is firstly about promoting the project and secondly about promoting Science in general. Thus, one expert stated:

"[...] that crowdfunding in contrast to other forms of financing is also a very power-ful communication tool, for the subject as such. Therefore, it is probably not primarily about the funding of the project, but to draw attention to the issue and create aware-ness for it" (B10:41).

Another expert emphasized that he used crowdfunding to inform the public because the issue was not necessarily accepted in society (B8:47). Other experts answered simi-larly, especially when it came to issues that are not really well known to the public but are nevertheless important (B3:51). In addition, for two other experts the website of Startnext.com was a good tool to promote the project, because all information is avail-able there in a nutshell, so there was no need to establish an own website (B9:5;

B1:29).

In addition, there is the issue of involving the public in the scientific process by step-ping out of the scientific sphere and sensitizing the public to science. One expert said:

"[...] that there is a certain chance in crowdfunding, especially through this public rela-tions work and the communication that is necessary to promote the campaign, that it will reduce the skepticism towards science in society. And that if there are more scien-tific crowdfunding campaigns, which do a lot of public relations work, then our society will develop into a more fact-based and science-engaged society" (B8:67).

Expert 4 even remarked that they had founded a non-profit association in the

mean-time, giving lectures at schools to leave the scientific sphere (B4:9). Another expert

pointed out that crowdfunding was a good way to make their own research more

transparent. For example, in traditional science there is a lack of transparency to the

public, as projects and results are only exchanged at internal meetings (B2:68). Thus,

the exchange with non-academics was also emphasized as a motive to inform people about what researchers do, for example, during a six-month stay abroad and the effort required for this (B11:33). One expert even suggested to use crowdfunding to draw attention to the limited funds for some research fields by addressing in the campaign that they are forced to do so "because it is apparently not possible in our research field to fund this in a different way" (B11:45). It becomes clear that for scientists crowdfund-ing is also a communication tool to get in touch with the public. Most (not all, as the barrier publicity in section 4.2.2 shows) would like to have a more open discourse with non-academics, in order to let them participate in the research, and to promote their own research.

Expand Network

The second motive that received special attention was the expansion of the individual network by establishing contact with other people. The well-known advantages of a network can be divided into professional contacts and contacts that result in financial advantages according to the experts. Thus one expert emphasizes that the effect of establishing useful contacts was equally valuable as the result of funding (B2:50). Simi-larly, one expert reports that the crowdfunding campaign resulted in new connections:

"Yes, indeed. I've been in contact with an Arizona scientist [...]. And we're also discuss-ing how to take further steps, to develop projects, to take these projects forward (B5:26).

However, the contacts do not necessarily have to be academics, as the other experts report. For example, one expert was offered a cooperation with a media school, which could offer the experts media support for crowdfunding campaigns in the future (B7:23). Another expert was glad that people from the research region contacted him on their own initiative and thus he already had useful contacts in the region (B2:28).

Another expert was even offered the further complete funding of the project by vari-ous agencies (B8:45).

However, this is an effect that scientists had rarely anticipated. Usually, the experts

only noticed afterwards what effects the crowdfunding campaign had on their

person-al network (B2:52; B8:45). Thus, one expert responded to the question whether he was

aware of this before:

"That was honestly a clicking moment in retrospect. So, we were aware that we would attract quite a lot of attention, but that it would be so much in the end, we didn't really expect" (B10:43).

This observation on the Motive Expand Network illustrates the numerous positive network effects, consisting of professional contacts in the field of research as well as financial advantages, even if these are not necessarily obvious to every researcher in advance. Alternative Funding

Despite the motives mentioned above, some experts also consider funding as a mo-tive. For example, when asked why he initiated a crowdfunding campaign, one expert answered "I needed the money" (B1:67). Some other experts had a similar situation, whereby it is irrelevant whether the experts had to fund smaller projects (B9:5; B6:3), or larger projects (B3:43; B7:3). However, it is noticeable that some experts were forced to take this step because they could not obtain other funding (B8:33; B10:3).

For example, the faculty often has no resources available (B4:3), or the subject does not match the research funding orientation (B5:12). Furthermore, one expert reported that he dropped off the research funding grid:

"Exactly, that was the last straw that we held on to, because we really had no other way around (B6:27).

However, other experts also see crowdfunding only as a complementary form of fund-ing to other acquired funds. Thus, crowdfundfund-ing only finances a part of the entire pro-ject, while institutes, sponsors and others provide the remaining funds (B2:8; B3:11;

B6:7).

Speed of Funding

A few experts also mentioned the speed of the crowdfunding process as an advantage,

but it was more the experts with smaller projects and funding goals. In fact, the

short-est time the experts reported was three months from the decision to use

crowdfund-ing to the payment of the fundcrowdfund-ing amount (B6:31), while four months was more

com-mon for projects of the same size (B9:33; B2:40). Considering that Startnext.com alone

ideally specifies four weeks for the campaign period (B1:33) and then needs some

fol-low-up time for payment (B11:29), three months for the whole project are therefore

quite short. Especially when compared to other sources of funding, which was also pointed out by this expert:

"So relatively quickly, considering how long it sometimes takes to apply for and receive funding by traditional approaches" (B6:31).

Larger projects, on the other hand, certainly required longer runtimes as some experts reported (B7:39; B3:35; B11:29). Without intending to be statistically representative for scientific crowdfunding projects, but rather as a point of reference based on the experiences of eleven interviews: The minimum duration for a crowdfunding campaign was three months, the maximum duration was nine months. The average of the eleven projects is 6.5 months, with a standard deviation of two months. Moreover, the ex-perts are not necessarily aware of this circumstance before the campaign, as the next section on barriers shows and as expert 11 summarizes:

"Well, it is very time-consuming, and I wasn t previously aware of that to be honest

(B11:9).

Im Dokument Crowdfunding - A way to finance science? (Seite 62-65)