Purpose: This paper aims to examine different hypotheses concerning the effects of guanxi on the reward-based crowdfunding project fundraising. Specifically, this study provides new insights into how guanxi and guanxi intensity may affect reward-based crowdfunding success and project performance in the Chinese context. Design/methodology/approach: The research data including 989 crowdfunding projects were collected from zhongchou.com which is the largest reward-based crowdfunding platform in a one-year period (2014.1-2014.12). The hypotheses are tested by using robust OLS regressions and robust logistic regressions. Robustness check was also conducted to test the validation of the results. Findings: This paper found that project developers’ guanxi-establishing behavior conducted before launching their own projects such as being fans of other projects and supporting other projects are positively related to project success. In addition, the intensity of guanxi-establishing behavior positively influences project performance in a significant way. Besides, the establishment and maintenance of project developers’ guanxi with funders during the fundraising process are also positively associated with project success and fundraising performance. Originality/value: Based on the theory of trust, this paper offers an interesting and novel perspective to investigate reward-based crowdfunding success in the Chinese context by taking guanxi and guanxi intensity into consideration.

This chapter offers a review of reward-based crowdfunding. Based on a concrete framework, this chapter extensively explains the definition, mechanisms, and unique aspects of reward-based crowdfunding. To better understand the status of reward-based crowdfunding from a global perspective, the development and regional characteristics of it in different crowdfunding markets are presented and discussed in this chapter. In addition, through a comprehensive literature review of key reward-based crowdfunding research, two main research streams of reward-based crowdfunding (success drivers and contributor behaviour) are summarized. Lastly, this chapter also sheds light on the implications of reward-based crowdfunding for practice and research, as well as mentions its potential contributions and limitations.

Donation crowdfunding is a form of internet-enabled fundraising where backers provide funding based on philanthropic motivations without expectation of monetary or material rewards. Despite accounting for only a marginal share of global crowdfunding volumes, donation crowdfunding is a unique model for supporting a wide range of prosocial and charitable causes, while allowing fundraisers to leverage benefits afforded by ICT solutions for more effective and efficient fundraising. The chapter provides an overview of the limited research on donation crowdfunding while highlighting donor motivations and behaviour, as well as drivers of success in donation campaigns. We find that current research suggests that donation behaviour is driven by impure altruism closely linked to intrinsic motivations such as satisfaction, joy, and a sense of belonging. Furthermore, several success drivers of donation crowdfunding campaigns have been identified with respect to factors at the fundraiser, campaign, and platform levels.

Although China is experiencing a transition from a relation-based society to a rule-based society, relationships among acquaintances still play an important role in resource allocation, such as the allocation of policy resources. This is particularly true in rural China, where targeted poverty alleviation is prevalent and a relation-based social structure still dominates. However, it is still unknown how relationships affect the livelihood strategy of households in rural China and how poverty alleviation policies plays a role between them. Therefore, this paper embeds poverty alleviation into the relation-based society and explores how households respond to the policy in this specific context. Using grounded theory research method and the sustainable livelihoods approach (SLA) framework, this paper contains in-depth interviews and field observations from three poverty-stricken villages in Northeast China. The results show that relationships have a significant impact on the households’ livelihood strategy. In other words, the households’ livelihood strategy is embedded in the relation-based society. The types of relationships induce households to choose maintained or developmental type livelihood strategies, while relationships influence how the poverty alleviation policies affect the livelihood strategy. This study is not only an extension of the SLA in the research context, but also provides a significant perspective for enriching the long-term mechanism of targeted poverty alleviation by building a theoretical model of the relationships between a relation-based society, targeted poverty alleviation and the livelihood strategies of households.

This chapter offers a comprehensive review and explanation of crowdfunding in China. It first extensively describes the status of crowdfunding in China by presenting the market facts, insights, and current regulations of the four main crowdfunding models (reward-based, equity-based, loan-based, and donation-based) respectively. Next, through a detailed up-to-date literature review of the key literature of Chinese crowdfunding, three main research streams are summarized and discussed covering success drivers, comparative studies of Chinese versus other contexts of crowdfunding practice, and applications of crowdfunding for creative and sustainability projects. Finally, both practical and research implications are presented together with the challenges and future research directions on crowdfunding in China.

While achieving great benefits, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has triggered potential problems between the transnational projects and local communities in the participant countries. However, there is still a knowledge gap on how corporate social responsibility (CSR) is adopted, and how CSR affects the local community. Based on a context of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), this research exploits a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to fill the gap. It finds that the CSR activities in the CPEC project are initiated by the long-term CSR initiative. Organized by the professional CSR foundation in an autonomous environment, the panoramic CSR activities are governed in a discretionary way and focus exclusively on the sustainability of the local community. Education, health-care, environment, and employment improve greatly after the implementation of the CPEC project. Theoretically, this research not only provides new insights into CSR research by taking an under-studied context of CPEC into study, but also proposes a mechanism of how CSR leads to the sustainability of local community by building a CSR-sustainability framework.