For further complication, what if you consider potential backers having different estimations of the value of the project?
That would raise the risk of backing-for-the-bonus projects that you don’t like. Maybe you would back the project to punch cute puppies to 5% or 25%, but if it’s at 75% you start to suspect that there are enough cute puppy haters out there to push it all the way if you get greedy for the bonus.
For good projects, you could have a source for the refund bonuses other than the platform or the project organizers—the most devoted fans. Allow backers to submit a pledge that, if the project is refunded, gets distributed to other backers rather than the person who submitted it.
Allow backers to submit a pledge that, if the project is refunded, gets distributed to other backers rather than the person who submitted it.
Oh, and maybe instead of knowing from the start what the refund would be (10%, 20%, some fixed amount...), you would proportionally distribute these funds between all other backers, and you can even have a counter that shows how much money is in the refund pool. That would be a very interesting refund scheme to test.
I’d be happy to see an experiment that simulates a more realistic scenario, with projects that have different goals, projects that have negative value, option for participants to “promote” projects, and also something like this refund scheme. Of course, an actual crowdfunding platform experimenting with this would be better, but this would still be a valuable experiment.
For further complication, what if you consider potential backers having different estimations of the value of the project?
That would raise the risk of backing-for-the-bonus projects that you don’t like. Maybe you would back the project to punch cute puppies to 5% or 25%, but if it’s at 75% you start to suspect that there are enough cute puppy haters out there to push it all the way if you get greedy for the bonus.
For good projects, you could have a source for the refund bonuses other than the platform or the project organizers—the most devoted fans. Allow backers to submit a pledge that, if the project is refunded, gets distributed to other backers rather than the person who submitted it.
Oh, and maybe instead of knowing from the start what the refund would be (10%, 20%, some fixed amount...), you would proportionally distribute these funds between all other backers, and you can even have a counter that shows how much money is in the refund pool. That would be a very interesting refund scheme to test.
I’d be happy to see an experiment that simulates a more realistic scenario, with projects that have different goals, projects that have negative value, option for participants to “promote” projects, and also something like this refund scheme. Of course, an actual crowdfunding platform experimenting with this would be better, but this would still be a valuable experiment.