Dynamic Goal Setting, Community Feedback, and Project Performance: Evidence from Online Crowdfunding

This paper advances our understanding of dynamic goal setting in online environments. Dynamic goal setting is an emerging practice in crowd-based projects. In some projects, goals are static, fixed from beginning to end. In... [ view full abstract ]

This paper advances our understanding of dynamic goal setting in online environments. Dynamic goal setting is an emerging practice in crowd-based projects. In some projects, goals are static, fixed from beginning to end. In others, goals are dynamic: after the projects’ initial goals are met, the initial goals are revised to incorporate community input. In information systems and organization sciences, there is paucity of research on dynamic goals as existing studies predominantly assume static goals. We advance theory on dynamic goal setting by examining its effects on project performance. Using data from online crowdfunding on Kickstarter, we find that the use of dynamic goals is associated with higher funding performance. Such positive effect is even stronger for projects with a higher level of community feedback. Our empirical results also reveal that the use of dynamic goals significantly increases a project’s likelihood of delivery delay, especially if project creators incorporate community feedback into goal revisions. The counterintuitive findings suggest that in online crowds, dynamic goals can motivate contributions but these contributions are not necessarily aligned with the initial goals, which highlights the dark side of dynamic goals.