The research conducted examines whether platform choice between Kickstarter and Indiegogo influences the success of reward-based crowdfunding campaigns launched between January 2022 and October 2025. The research builds on the uncertainty problem in crowdfunding, information asymmetry theory, and signaling theory to explain how backers evaluate campaigns using incomplete information and rely on visible characteristics such as funding goal, duration, and category. During the mentioned period, Kickstarter used an all-or-nothing funding model while Indiegogo had a flexible funding model until the end of the period. Based on this, platform context may influence both baseline success and how campaign characteristics are interpreted by backers.
For the analysis the archived Web Robots data was used. After structuring, deduping, converting currencies, and harmonizing certain categories, the model-ready dataset contained 98,271 campaigns: 87,602 from Kickstarter and 10,669 from Indiegogo. Logistic regression was used because campaign success is binary – 1 if successful, 0 if not. The regression analysis uses three model specifications: a controls-only model with log funding goal, campaign duration, broad category, and launch year; a second model adding platform choice; and a third model adding the interaction between platform choice and log funding goal.
The results show that platform choice is associated with success. In the full model, Indiegogo campaigns have lower odds of success than comparable Kickstarter campaigns (odds ratio = 0.548, 95% CI [0.522, 0.577], p < .001). Higher funding goals and longer durations are also negatively associated with success. The funding-goal effect is stable across the robustness analyses, supporting the expectation that higher goals reduce the likelihood of success. The platform-by-goal interaction suggests that the negative funding-goal effect is slightly weaker on Indiegogo, but the robustness analyses show that this interaction is not stable across all periods and subsectors. In general, the findings indicate that crowdfunding success factors should not automatically be generalized from one platform to another, since platform effects depend on time period and campaign type.