Crowdfunding in the Middle East and North Africa region : a case study of Zoomaal -

Abstract

Crowdfunding provides entrepreneurs with a mean to raise the necessary funds to develop a certain idea or initiative, by tapping into the funds of the audience available online and bypassing the conventional financial mediators. Based on data provided by a reward, non-monetary-based crowdfunding platform based in MENA, “Zoomaal”, that covers projects from 2013 to 2016 with more than 1300 successful and unsuccessful projects, nearly 6700 backers and approximately 1.5 US million dollars of funding in total, this paper offers a description of the underlying dynamics of success and failure for crowdfunded projects. It suggests that both the choice of target goal and duration are of relevance to the success outcome. Further, location and category of projects are related to successful funding outcome and project backers’ behavior. These results provide insight into the emerging phenomenon of crowdfunding in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The findings of this paper shed light on the factors that may influence the capacity to get entrepreneurial financing via crowdfunding and are of interest for project creators and crowdfunding platforms.