Abstract

Digital crowdfunding represents a rapidly expanding site of platformized cultural participation, where audiences do not merely consume cultural products (Sun 2013) but actively co-create them through financial backing, symbolic endorsement, and collective visibility (Gil-Gomez et al. 2023). In contrast to traditional investment—which relies on rational risk assessments—crowdfunding operates as an affective public sphere in which algorithmic visibility, social proof, and community signaling shape decision-making. By engaging with scholarly discourses on platform infrastructures and sociotechnical governance, this study deepens the understanding of collective decision-making within digitally mediated environments and reframes crowdfunding as a digital humanities object: a socio-technical system where meanings, emotions, and collective identities are produced through datafication and mediated participation.

To investigate how platform governance influences user behavior, this research integrates theoretical frameworks of herding behavior (Kim et al. 2023) and collective action to develop a dual-path psychological model linking two platform-level mechanisms—information transparency and herding cues—to four mediators: customer empowerment, emotional contagion, perceived risk (Surana et al. 2024), and hedonic value. Rather than assuming that transparency generates rational, self-interested investment, we examine how affective publics form around projects through shared enthusiasm, narrative resonance, and symbolic belonging. Crowdfunding platforms, through interface design and socio-material affordances such as progress bars, backer counts, trending labels, and endorsement badges, create algorithmically curated environments where participation becomes a cultural expression rather than a calculated financial act.

This study conducted a survey of 353 experienced funders through targeted recruitment on online platforms and social media, with scale development referencing existing literature to precisely operationalize constructs. The sample is predominantly composed of young adults aged 21 to 30 (59.49%), with 95.2% holding a university degree or higher. Results disrupt conventional rational-choice assumptions: information transparency does not directly increase participation intention, nor does it significantly reduce perceived risk. Transparency only becomes meaningful when it triggers emotional contagion and a sense of participatory empowerment, which then produce hedonic value—excitement, pleasure, and a feeling of co-ownership in cultural creation. In contrast, herding cues exert both direct and stronger indirect effects on intention. Funders join because other people are joining, and because joining feels emotionally and communally rewarding. Participation is not merely calculated; it is performed.

These findings situate crowdfunding within key digital humanities discourses on platformization, affective publics, and sociotechnical governance. The results show that digital participation relies less on rational information processing and more on affective infrastructures, in which platform design orchestrates collective mood, trust, and meaning-making. Rather than reducing uncertainty, transparency becomes symbolic—its significance is socially produced through digital collectivism and community narratives.

By foregrounding the emotional and sociocultural dimensions of crowdfunding, this study challenges the dominant assumption that more data or higher informational accuracy automatically produce rational citizens. Instead, it reveals how platform architectures shape public imagination, trust, and agency, encouraging participants to act as members of digitally mediated communities. In doing so, crowdfunding functions as a cultural interface that transforms financial support into a performative act of belonging.

Ultimately, by engaging with scholarly discourses on affective publics and platform empowerment, the dual-path framework theorizes crowdfunding as a digital humanities object that produces cultural meaning and collective identity, turning dispersed individuals into affective publics. This study challenges the assumption of data as rationality, revealing that crowdfunding has emerged as a cultural interface where audiences renegotiate collective agency and digital citizenship within algorithmic environments. It demonstrates that decision-making in digital spaces is embedded in emotional resonance, symbolic affiliation, and algorithmic cues—not merely cognitive evaluation. This perspective helps illuminate how digital systems reshape collective action and cultural production, offering new directions for future research on cross-cultural and comparative studies, platform ethics, digital community formation, and the politics of participation in networked societies.

Keywords: Digital crowdfunding, platformization, affective publics, algorithmic visibility, sociotechnical participation