Idols That You Decide - Understanding The Phenomenon and Practices of Fan-Idol Crowdfunding

Idols That You Decide: Understanding the Phenomenon and
Practices of Fan-idol Crowdfunding
YE WANG, ETH Zurich

HANTAO ZHAO, Southeast University
ZHICONG LU, City University of Hong Kong
ROGER WATTENHOFER, ETH Zurich
Fig. 1. A fan community celebrates their idol’s birthday by sponsoring public advertisement and city light
show in various locations. From left to right: Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Shenzhen.
Fan-idol crowdfunding is an online fandom activity in which fans raise money for their idols (e.g., pop stars,
movie stars, entertainers, etc.) without any involvement of the idols themselves and their agencies. A great
number of crowdfunding campaigns are held every day online, among which one single event can raise up
to 2 million dollars. The fund is used to vote, promote, and purchase gifts for their idols and conduct commer-
cial activities. To better understand how fan communities are motivated to create and fund these projects, we
conduct a mixed-methods study, including crowdfunding observations, interviews, and quantitative crowd-
funding data analysis. We find that fundraisers and supporters share similar motivations to raise funds, such
as resource integration, positive feedback, collective activities, and community engagement. Because there is
no direct contact between fundraisers and beneficiaries, follow-up auditing has been introduced to make the
crowdfunding process more transparent. We discuss the uniqueness of fan-idol crowdfunding compared to
commercial crowdfunding and philanthropic crowdfunding. Relationships between fundraisers and support-
ers and their benefits are the most significant differences, influencing how fan communities use crowdfunding
services. Moreover, gamification designs (e.g., encouragement of competition, cooperation) incentivize sup-
porters’ intention in crowdfunding. We also consider the controversies of this new form of crowdfunding for
both fans and idols.
ACM Reference Format:

Ye Wang, Hantao Zhao, Zhicong Lu, and Roger Wattenhofer. 2021. Idols That You Decide: Understanding the
Phenomenon and Practices of Fan-idol Crowdfunding. 1, 1 (May 2021), 22 pages.
Authors’ addresses: Ye Wang, [email protected], ETH Zurich; Hantao Zhao, [email protected], Southeast Univer-
sity; Zhicong Lu, [email protected], City University of Hong Kong; Roger Wattenhofer, [email protected], ETH
Zurich.
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, Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: May 2021.
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2 Ye Wang, Hantao Zhao, Zhicong Lu, and Roger Wattenhofer
1 INTRODUCTION
If you passed by Shanghai on the evening of June 15, 2020, you might notice that the LED screen on
the twin towers of Shanghai Global Harbor was repeatedly playing a birthday wishes for a 16-year-
old boy for three hours. The same contents were broadcast to people in many other cities through
different landmarks at the same time [57] (Figure 1). The boy who received the blessing is not a
privileged child, but a member of an idol group that has started the career for less than one year.
What is more surprising is that all these celebrations were not organized by his agency company
but organized by his fan community. His fans have raised over 100,000 dollars to celebrate his
birthday through crowdfunding, a new genre of fundraising form: fan-idol crowdfunding.
Fan-idol crowdfunding is an online activity within fan communities, where distributed fans
raise money together for specific purposes related to their idols (including pop stars, movie stars,
entertainers, etc.). With deepened interactions between idols and their supporters within the past
decades, fans are no longer just passively enjoying their idols’ performance and attending fan meet-
ings organized by agency companies. They also want to contribute to their idols’ careers actively.
Crowdfunding can potentially enable fan communities to collect money for a better expression
of their supports for their idols. Crowdfunding aims include getting their idols a top ranking in
popularity competitions, publicity of their idols, buying a huge amount of products endorsed by
their idols, and getting their idols opportunities for performance.
Crowdfunding marrying fandom is an emerging socio-technological phenomenon in the field of
computer-supported cooperative work. Unlike traditional crowdfunding events, the beneficiaries
of fan-idol crowdfunding (i.e., idols) are not involved in crowdfunding campaigns. Crowdfunding
participants and beneficiaries are separated and do not have a close relationship [33, 48]. Studying
the mechanism of fan-idol crowdfunding and motivations for participation can help us to under-
stand how crowdfunding can be used for non-commercial and non-philanthropic aims [23, 48]. It
can also help us understand how the relationships between fundraisers, supporters, and beneficia-
ries influence crowdfunding practices. Moreover, the mechanism of how fans are incentivized to
fund money during crowdfunding campaigns and how fan communities maintain the credibility
in fan-idol crowdfunding can reveal the influence of social interactions within fan communities
on their experience and engagement. To better understand the unique features in fan-idol crowd-
funding, our research seeks to answer the following research questions (RQ):
• RQ1: Who are the fundraisers and what role they play in fan-idol crowdfunding?
• RQ2: Why fans are motivated to participate in fan-idol crowdfunding?
• RQ3: Which deterrents prevent them from joining fan-idol crowdfunding?
• RQ4: What incentive fans to contribute to fan-idol crowdfunding?
• RQ5: How fan communities maintain the credibility of fan-idol crowdfunding?
We conduct a mixed-methods study, including observations of crowdfunding events, interviews
with dedicated users (N=11), and quantitative analysis of crowdfunding data of an idol group with
more than 200 members from 2017 to 2020. Our findings reveal that fan-idol crowdfunding is not
only in the same format as traditional crowdfunding but also a spontaneous collaboration within
the fan community. In addition, most fundraisers are recognized fan organizations in fan commu-
nities, while individuals who manage the campaigns always act as supporters in crowdfunding.
Both the fund manager and supporter in fan-idol crowdfunding share the same community iden-
tity, thus the reasons for creating and participating in crowdfunding are similar. Such motivations
depend on different crowdfunding aims: for voting activities, fan communities are motivated by
integrating resources to help their idols get higher rankings in the competitions; for crowdfunding
aims where individuals can hardly afford the cost, fan communities will launch crowdfunding to
achieve their goals; for crowdfunding aims which can be achieved by individuals, the motivation

Idols That You Decide: Understanding the Phenomenon and Practices of Fan-idol Crowdfunding 3
for such crowdfunding campaigns is to enhance the engagement of online activities within the
community. Some fans are resistant to raise funds because fan-idol crowdfunding is not profitable
to fundraisers. Fans refuse to participate in crowdfunding if they lack trust with fundraisers, think
the project aim is not useful, have enough ability to realize the project aim by themselves, or have
a limited budget. To incentive fans to fund money, interactions within the fan community have
been strengthened by various methods: instant rewards, competitions among supporters, and com-
petitions between different fan communities. Because the relationship between fundraisers and
beneficiaries is not close, unique auditing activities have been developed within fan communities,
including disclosure of usage of raised money and third-party monitoring.
This paper makes the following contributions by exposing the following three aspects of fan-
idol crowdfunding: the practices, motivations, and deterrents in fan-idol crowdfunding activities;
the mechanism and dynamics of fan-idol crowdfunding and how design features improve user
engagement; and the comparison with prior research and the implications for future research in
crowdfunding.
2 BACKGROUND AND RELATED WORK

2.1 Fan Economy and Fan-idol Interactions
The rise of pop culture has been a major iconic phenomenon of the last century. With the success
of the entertainment industries, idols have been massively created and presented in front of the
public eyes. Ever since the success of the TV franchise of Pop Idol and American Idol [11, 27], the
born of a star starts to strongly link with the general public audiences and their direct involve-
ment during the early stage of a young idol’s career. Audience voting can be a key to the success
of pop star competitions since it generates a feeling of belonging and engagement for the fans.
It has been estimated that thees competitions generate revenue of $ 6 billion annually for the in-
dustry [3]. Among the pop culture stars, a Japanese idol group AKB48 [22] first introduced the
concept of “idols you can meet”, which allows the group’s supporters to have many regular occa-
sions to meet the group members in frequent offline events [38]. With rotating group members
and regular popularity contests, the idols can create much longer and profound involvement with
their fans regarding financial contribution and emotional engagement. With such a mechanism,
AKB48 quickly took over the position as the best-selling singles female artist ever in Japan, with
40 million records sold in 2014 [2].
Professionalization of the entertainment industry gives agency companies more power to de-
cide which idol can receive the necessary resource of becoming a star, such as training courses,
media exposure, and opportunities to make a new record, etc. Idols are usually in a much weaker
position in front of the agency company and need to comply with the agency’s strategies uncondi-
tionally [37]. The power Idols gain in front of their agencies is the support of their fans. Fans can
influence the agency’s strategy of the idols through their constant support to their idols. Each year,
agencies, television stations, and other entertainment organizations hold popularity competitions
among idols, who are voted and ranked by fans. Only the most popular ones can be included in the
promotional list [13, 25, 38]. The voting mechanism of these idols makes the fan-idol engagement
upgrade to a new level. The idols constantly require support from the fans and the fans can witness
how a star was born and grown.
This special involvement helps establish a new form of fan-idol interaction [4] that makes the
fan support activities more diverse and more necessary. Fans carry out online and offline activities,
hoping to bring good influence to their idols and thus decide their careers. For example, fans use
internet platforms to promote their stars on social media or organize offline publicity events for
idols. These activities are organized by volunteer fans for their supported idols even without official

involvement from the agencies. Fan communities are becoming more active in fan-idol interactions
for better expressions of their supports for their idols.
2.2 Online Fandom Community

The trend of fandom has been accelerated by the emerging of online platforms. Video stream-
ing services [29, 39] and social networks [18, 43, 50] shorten the distance between the idols and
the fans, making the fans’ involvement with their idols rapidly evolved in both virtual and real
worlds [32, 36]. With the help of the development of information technologies, the chasing star
phenomenon has shifted between reality and the online world. Fandom communities used the
online channel to create and share fanworks [14]. Technologies have helped to facilitate collabo-
ration between professionals and celebrities [43]. In addition to common social networks, Tumblr
has also been used for fan communities to collaborate and cooperate [26]. Fan communities have
gained influence in many aspects that were not considered by the traditional idol culture. Volun-
teering for collaborative projects has commonly happened through online community [8]. This
collaborating can also go beyond group creation to form a genre of the mentoring relationship
among the fans [9, 17]. Fiesler and colleagues used a case study of fan collaboration to study the
values of feminist and HCI into design [19].
Previous studies have four main gaps compared to our work. First, previous studies have not
fully considered how relationships between idols and fans influence online community activities.
This paper focuses on fan-idol crowdfunding, where online fan communities are motivated to
conduct online activity because of the relationship between their idols and themselves, which
provides a new perspective of research on fandom. Second, very little has been researched about
the new genre fandom, where idols and fans interact more frequently and fans actively participate
in their idols’ careers. Third, prior studies focused on the activities and interactions inside the
fan community. They overlooked interactions among different fan communities and how external
stimuli influences fan activities. Finally, financial activities have not been considered in previous
results, which are very important in fandom because of the rapid growth of the fan economy.
2.3 Fan Crowdfunding

Originated from microfinancing [41], crowdfunding is a new type of financing tool that has been
used to support entrepreneurship [56], creative projects [5], and charity [33, 55] through internet
campaigns. Among those, start-up crowdfunding has been the most popular concept to support
early-stage small business companies [49], due to a series of successful stories [53]. While collect-
ing a small amount of money from many people is not a new concept, which has been widely seen
in forms of charity [33] and social movement campaign [40], the methods and purpose of crowd-
funding have been vastly adapted and evolved in the age of the internet. The crowdfunding event
occurred through Web-based applications, such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter, and the investors
can usually obtain certain benefits such as early access to the product or exclusive content. The
donors here have a mixed role of helper and consumer [49]. Successful platforms attract creative
project ideas and business owners by providing the opportunity to raise money from many people
at the beginning of their foundation. Tools have been created to predict the success rate of online
crowdfunding projects [24]. Some companies utilized the fortunate resource to finish the boot-
strapping, increase public exposure, and attract their early customers [7, 20]. Since the main body
of the crowdfunding is usually corporate entities, once the early-stage funding has been accumu-
lated or reached, they would require a much larger amount of resource that is no longer possible
reached through crowdfunding format. Therefore, crowdfunding for business or independent artist
usually require donations only for once, while a massive amount of people would participate in

but a lower contribution amount per participant (i.e., with an average donation amount of less
than one dollar [28]).
Fan-crowdfunding is an activity organized in fan communities among fans to collect money
to better support their idols. Fans create crowdfunding campaigns on fan-idol crowdfunding plat-
forms when they want to achieve goals for their idols. Crowdfunding aims can be classified into
the following categories: voting activities, commercial activities, promotional activities, and gift-
ing activities. Voting activities help idols to win a better position in popularity contests. The
voting results not only determine the winners but also reflect the idol’s popularity, which will
significantly influence the idol’s perception in the eyes of advertisers and investors and further
impact their follow-up opportunities, including potential endorsements, TV shows, movies, and
concerts. Commercial activities aim to buy a considerable amount of endorsed products or art-
work of their idols, such as singles, albums, magazines, or their business endorsements. On the
one hand, idols will get direct benefits from the sales of these goods. On the other hand, investors
will have a clear sense of the business value of the idols through the sales of their products, which
will affect further cooperation with the idol. Promotional activities are organized by fans to
popularize their idols without the involvement of the agency company. These promotions can be
either online and offline. Online promotions mainly happen on social media, while fans will buy
some bot accounts to broadcast the information about their idol and pay for a position on trending
hashtags. Offline promotions mean publishing the idol’s information on signboards, advertising
on newspapers, public transports, and distributing brochures to introduce the idol to the public.
Gifting activities include sending gifts to others as an entirety of the fan community, i.e., giving
gifts to the idol and other people around the idol. On memorial days, such as the birthday, fans
would like to manifest their love for the idol with well-prepared gifts, which are not limited to
clothing, luxury goods, collectibles, or even naming rights to a planet, holding charitable activities
in the name of the idol. When their idol is shooting a movie or TV series, fans will visit the crew
and prepare gifts for the staff.
A considerable amount of literature has been published on crowdfunding [7, 20, 24, 33, 40, 49,
53], yet none of them has studies the particular differences between traditional crowdfunding
and fan-idol crowdfunding. The series of differences between them makes the investigation of the
suggested research questions very appealing. First, fundraisers in fan-idol crowdfunding do not
have a close relationship with beneficiaries. This difference in relationships between fundraisers
and beneficiaries significantly influences credibility of fan-idol crowdfunding campaigns. Second,
supporters do not directly benefit from the contribution, which implies a different intention and
motivation of contribution to fan-idol crowdfunding than traditional crowdfunding. Finally, fan-
idol crowdfunding relies on the existing social relationship within fan communities. Fundraisers
and supporters interact with each other frequently in fan communities, resulting in unique designs
to incentive donations.
3 METHOD
To answer the research questions, we conduct a mixed-methods study, consisting of fan-idol crowd-
funding observations, interviews, and a quantitative study on crowdfunding data of an idol group
(SNH48) over four years.
3.1 Data Collection: Crowdfunding Observations

Fundraisers of fan-idol crowdfunding campaigns publish the information over Internet forum or
online broadcast board of the fan community. In order to track the targeted audience, we par-
ticipated in 10 fan-idol crowdfunding campaigns which are published on Weibo Chaohua (i.e.,
huati.weibo.cn, the most popular Internet forum for fan communities) between June 2020 and

September 2020. These campaigns were held on mainstream platforms of fan-idol crowdfunding,
including Taoba (www.taoba.club), Owhat (www.owhat.cn), and Modian (www.modian.com). We
observed both the fundraisers and supporters’ identities and their behaviors during the campaigns
on crowdfunding platforms and other social media, including Weibo and Douban. We also followed
the crowdfunding information published by fundraisers after the campaigns on Weibo Chaohua,
including how they used the money and the project’s progress.
3.2 Data Collection: Interviews

Because fan-idol crowdfunding campaigns are always published on Chaohua, the more actively
users participate in Chaohua, the more likely they are to be exposed to crowdfunding-related in-
formation. Therefore, to better understand fans’ thoughts on fan-idol crowdfunding, we consider
interviewing dedicated participants in Chaohua. Chaohua lists the ranking of fans according to
their contributions to the fan community (how much they post messages, images, and videos on
the forum and how popular their messages are within the fan community). We sent invitation mes-
sages to those top-ranked fans and received 11 responses from them. We conducted interviews us-
ing WeChat voice calls with 11 participants between October and November 2020. All participants
are familiar with fan-idol crowdfunding and two of them have experienced in creating fan-idol
crowdfunding campaigns. Interviews were conducted in Mandarin, audio-taped, and transcribed
by native Mandarin speakers in the research team. Each interview took 30-45 minutes, and each
participant received a 100 CNY honorarium for their time. The demographics of the interviewees
are summarized in Table 1.
ID Gender Age Location Country Also fundraisers

P1 Female 22 Guangdong China No
P2 Female 32 Ottawa Canada Yes
P3 Female 23 Liaoning China Yes
P4 Male 23 Zürich Switzerland No
P5 Female 20 Shanghai China No
P6 Female 21 Guangdong China No
P7 Male 30 Jülich German No
P8 Female 25 Beijing China No
P9 Female 22 Sichuan China No
P10 Female 27 Beijing China No
P11 Male 30 Shanghai China No
Table 1. Summary demographics of the interviewees.
3.3 Data Collection: Crowdfunding Data of SNH48

Previous observations and interviews were supplemented with crowdfunding data. Fan communi-
ties have collected and published information (www.jzb48.com) about crowdfunding campaigns
for SNH48 from 2017 to 2020, an idol group in China with more than 200 members. They have
recorded data of all crowdfunding campaigns, including the identity of the fundraiser, the bene-
ficiary of the campaign, the duration of the campaign, the amount of raised funds. We obtained
the authors’ permission to use the published data. They also provide us how much supporters
contribute to fan-idol crowdfunding. Fans’ identities and the exact amount of money they donate
have not been provided for ensuring their privacy. According to the amount of money donated by

supporters, supporters are classified into five tiers: supporters who have contributed less than 33
RMB (Tier 5), who have contributed between 33 RMB to 330 RMB (Tier 4), who have contributed
between 330 RMB to 3300 RMB (Tier 3), who have contributed between 3300 RMB to 33000 RMB
(Tier 2), and who have contributed more than 33000 RMB (Tier 1).
3.4 Analysis
We used an open coding method [12] to analyze the crowdfunding observations and interview tran-
scripts of our participants. We focused on the relationships between fundraisers and supporters,
their motivations and deterrents, their interactions during campaigns, and following-up activities
after crowdfunding on social media. Two native Mandarin-speaking authors coded all responses
individually and met to reach the agreement on the final codes. All codes were translated into
English and were discussed by the research team. We also used a quantitative approach with the
collected crowdfunding data to examine the relationships among the financial contribution and the
idols’ popularity. Different sources of data were triangulated to answer the research questions.
4 RQ1: FUNDRAISERS IN FAN-IDOL CROWDFUNDING

4.1 Identity of Fundraisers
We first investigate fundamental elements of crowdfunding activity, i.e., the identity of fundraisers
in fan-idol crowdfunding. Fan-idol crowdfunding campaigns are held within fan communities, and
these campaigns are always created in the name of different fan organizations. Taking crowdfund-
ing for SNH48 in 2019 as an example, 4125 crowdfunding events are created to collect money for
193 idols, and all of them are created by fan organizations. 3742 events were targeted in the entire
fan community of an idol, while the remaining 383 events were conducted within some specific
fan communities, such as female fan communities and overseas fan communities.
Crowdfunding platforms verify whether the fan organizations can take responsibility for crowd-
funding campaigns. Platforms check the organization’s influence in fan communities (e.g., number
of followers on social media, number of posts they publish, historical crowdfunding performance
on the platform), and the organization administrators’ identity. One of our participants is an admin-
istrator of a fan organization and has been asked for providing identification information: “Now
Owhat requires a lot of information to validate a project. We have to prove that we own an influential
social media account within the fan community. We, as the administrator of the fan organization,
need to provide identity documents as well.” (P3)
Once a crowdfunding campaign is created, fundraisers would share the information through
social media and encourage other fans to participate in the activity. If the fundraiser has not gained
enough recognition in the fan community, the project cannot attract attention from supporters.
There is already a commonsense of trustworthy people or groups within the fan community: “Of
course, any zhanzi (fan club/organization) or dafen (famous fans) can raise funds, but I only trust
those who have a reputation in the community.” (P10)
4.2 Reputation of Fundraisers

The reputation of fan organizations, or how fans trust the organization, can be determined by the
following aspects, namely officiality, contribution, and transparency.
Officiality determines whether the idol’s agency company is involved in the fan organizations.
Fans expect their behaviors are not controlled by their idols and the agencies. Therefore, they
do not want the beneficiaries to interfere in events happening in the fan community: “If the fan
organization is related to the agency, we would be very distrusted of them. I feel that the agency’s
action only depends on the benefit.” (P1)

Contribution can be considered as how much the fan organization devoted to the community.
First, supporters care about whether the fan organization has organized successful activities: “If
I’m satisfied with some of the events they’ve held before, I’ll trust the fan organization. They can use
my money to realize the goal.” (P10) Second, if the fan organization can represent fans’ demand,
it will get more support from the community: “My idol belongs to an idol group. There are some
crowdfunding projects for the entire group. But I prefer to attend the crowdfunding held by the fan
organization of my idol himself. Because they are more able to support my idol as I expect.” (P6)
Transparency represents whether the fan organization’s administrators reveal their identities
to the community and the plan for the raised money. It is not necessary to be the real world’s
identity, but at least the identity in social media. Not every activity can be held successfully, or there
is a risk such that the fundraiser might misuse the raised money. Therefore, supporters would like
to make sure that they can find the person responsible for the crowdfunding: “They will publicize
the information of the people who are in charge of the crowdfunding activity. I may not know some
of them, but I know who will be responsible for it if something goes wrong.” (P9)
4.3 Roles of Fundraisers

When we talk about the fundraisers of fan-idol crowdfunding, there are two levels of meaning.
The first meaning is the name showing on the crowdfunding website, which is mostly fan organi-
zations. The second meaning is the people who manage crowdfunding campaigns, which are the
real fundraisers. They launch projects on platforms, organize the entire activity, spend the raised
funds to achieve objects, and receive other participants’ audits, but without any profits: “I have
not earned anything from crowdfunding. It is more like ’work for love’. Our fan community has these
demands, and I have the ability to take responsibility for the crowdfunding, then I do it.” (P2)
These “fundraisers” share the same community identity as other supporters, i.e., fans of their
idols. They also involve in crowdfunding as supporters in their own names: “I spend almost twenty
thousand on crowdfunding every year. (Interviewer: Aren’t you already fundraisers?) Yes. But these
are two different things. Raising funds is because we must have some people to organize (crowdfunding
events) for the fan community. Giving money is my support for my idol.” (P3)
Therefore, in fan-idol crowdfunding, there does not exist a significant boundary between fundrais-
ers and supporters. When there is a demand for crowdfunding within fan communities, community
members will collaborate spontaneously under the leadership of some fan organizations. Fundrais-
ers are those who take more initiative to undertake work in fan communities. They still play as
supporters as other fans in crowdfunding campaigns.
5 RQ2: CROWDFUNDING MOTIVATIONS

In traditional crowdfunding projects, fundraisers are usually direct beneficiaries. While in fan-
idol crowdfunding, both fundraisers and supporters do not receive any financial benefit. As we
discussed in Section 4.3, fundraisers also participate in crowdfunding as supporters, and they con-
sider crowdfunding as an activity for the entire fan community.
In this section, rather than answering what motivates supporters to give money in crowdfund-
ing, we aim to find the motivations for fans to organize and participate in crowdfunding, either as
fundraisers or supporters. We summarize the motivations as resource integration, positive feed-
back, collective activities, and community engagement.
5.1 Resource Integration

In some voting and promotional activities, both human and financial resources are needed. For
example, some voting activities limit the number of votes for each registered account. If fans want
their idol to getting a good position in the competition, they have to buy enough accounts and

Fig. 2. Popularity (ranking) and crowdfunding amount of the top 48 SNH48 idols in 2019. The ranking rep-
resents their final positions in the popularity contest of the year.
then complete the voting process with each account. It is the same for some proportional activities.
Because of the ranking rules on some social media, fans will use many different accounts to forward
and comment on their idols’ posts and articles, which requires both money for accounts and labor
for operations. It is clear that for such activities, participants involved in the resource reallocation:
“Because I do not have time to vote for my idol, I just support the crowdfunding for these voting
activities. The fan organization will buy accounts and organize some other fans who have enough
time to vote. You know, I have money but no time, they have time but no money.” (P8)
Market price also motivates both fundraisers and supporters to participate in crowdfunding.
Some products, such as voting tickets and albums, can be purchased in bulk at lower prices, so fan
organizations will organize such activities to raise money. Some fans think crowdfunding can max-
imize the utilization of their money: “If I can vote more to my idol by participating in crowdfunding.
Of course, I will. I don’t want her to lose the competition because I buy expensive tickets.” (P4)
5.2 Positive Feedback

Resource integration motivates supporters to participate in crowdfunding campaigns for voting
because they want their idols to become top rank in voting activities. However, the amount of fund
money does not directly determine the number of votes that the idol will receive in the activities.
On the other hand, some fans may prefer to vote by themselves. However, we find that the voting
results are highly correlated to the number of money fans raised. This positive feedback encourages
fans to spend more and more money every year on crowdfunding.
SNH48 group holds a popularity contest every year among all group members. The result of
this voting activity determines idols’ positions in their show performances in the next year. Fan
community conducts crowdfunding for group members individually, and these data are included
in our study. We find a strong correlation between the ranking and the fund money. Figure 2
demonstrates the rank of top 48 SNH48 idols in their voting activity in 2019 and their fans’ financial
contribution to the activity. For the idol who got the first place in the popularity contest, we denote
her popularity as 48 and for the idol who got the 48th place, we denote her popularity as 1. The
correlation coefficient is 0.82, implying the connections between the amount of money that the
idol can crowdfund online and the idol’s popularity in the final contest.

Fig. 3. Ratio of the supporters of different tiers from year 2017 to 2020.
Fans receive positive feedback of their crowdfunding from the ranking result, which motivates
them to give their money to the fundraiser. We examine the amount of contribution of crowdfund-
ing supporters from 2017 to 2020 and find that their contributions are gradually increasing.
Figure 3 presents the comparison between the ratio (%) of different tiers (the classification has
been described in Section 3.3) across the four years. It can be seen that the ratios of Tier 2,3,4 have
been increasing through the first three years, which can be seen that between the year 2017 and
year 2019, crowdfunding has the trend of contributing more per supporter. However, in 2020, the
ratios of Tier 2,3,4 suddenly dropped, which can be a result of the rise in the number of supporters
from 2019 (=71160) to 2020 (=119508).
5.3 Collective Activities

Some commercial, promotional, and gifting activities require a large amount of money, which
cannot easily be realized by a single fan. Therefore, some fundraisers will launch crowdfunding for
these activities: “When he has a concert, we want to buy some billboards to publish this information
and support him. Our fan organization will create a crowdfunding project for this goal. The members
of our fan organization are mainly not in China now. It will be more convenient for us to collect money
together first and then contact the business in China.” (P2)
Same as the fundraisers’ side, these collective activities are also popular among supporters,
which motivates them to join crowdfunding: “For example charitable activities, I would like to help
others in the name of my idol. But it is hard for me to contact some charitable programs individually.
Some fan organizations will organize such events, and I definitely would like to give my money to
them.” (P10) Moreover, fans also support crowdfunding in order for the idol to have a good business
performance: “We care about how many magazines of my idol sells in a short period, like 1 second,
or 5 seconds. For myself, it is hard to place the order in such a short time. That’s why I participate in
the crowdfunding campaign. I know the fan organization can do it perfectly with our money.” (P8)
5.4 Community Engagement

Aside from motivations that better results can be obtained through crowdfunding, such as pooling
resources and achieving collective goals, crowdfunding is also considered as a method to deepen

the identity of fan communities. Some activities can be easily done by individuals, such as pur-
chasing endorsements products, while fan communities consider crowdfunding campaigns can
encourage more fans to participate in.
Fan-idol crowdfunding activities are always posted over internet forums, and fans may notice
that there are some important activities that will be held by reading these posts: “Sometimes for
daily promotional crowdfunding, It is not something that I always join, but I will support them if I
saw it on the social media.” (P5) Meanwhile, the engagement of some fans will incentivize others
involving in supporting activities: “If we do not hold crowdfunding for the activity, some fans might
not know our idol need this and won’t spend money on it. However, if they observe that other fans
participate in crowdfunding, they will understand how important it is and be involved in it.” (P3).
On the other hand, crowdfunding campaigns gather fans to express their supports to the idol in
a short period and deepen the perception that they are in the same community. Compared to sup-
porting their idols in individual, some fans feel that supporting through crowdfunding motivates
their engagements: “I feel that all of us fans were putting effort for the same goal. I was touched by
this feeling of everyone working hard together and wanted to spend my money with them.” (P9)
6 RQ3: CROWDFUNDING DETERRENTS

In addition to considering participants’ motivations for attending crowdfunding, interviewees also
expressed several considerations that prevent them from soliciting and contributing. We first sum-
marize the deterrents for fans to become fundraisers of crowdfunding projects and then discuss
why existing successful fundraisers do not solicit resources for some activities publicly. For sup-
porters, we focus on concerns about trust, practicality, necessity, and budget, which make them
hesitate to donate money to fundraisers.
6.1 Deterrents of Becoming a Fundraisers

The reasons that fans decide not to become fundraisers for their idols can be classified into two
aspects: do not want to organize crowdfunding campaigns in general, and do not want to organize
a specific event.
6.1.1 Not becoming a fundraiser. As we discussed in Section 4, crowdfunding administrators’ iden-

tity will be released to fan communities. Meanwhile, fundraisers have to undertake many respon-
sibilities without any profit. Some fans refuse to actively join as fundraisers with the concern in
these two aspects.
The first reason that stated by interviewees is that they are not influential in the fan community.
Other fans will not trust crowdfunding campaigns held by an unknown fan. Even if their identi-
ties can be made public, they will not be able to gain widespread recognition: “I’m nobody in the
fan community. Who am I to raise money. This is the kind of thing that would be handled by some
recognized fan organizations or influential fans.” (P1)
Secondly, crowdfunding is not simply collecting money; it also involves certain follow-up work
afterward, including organizing voting, setting up events venue, managing and using funds, which
are voluntary jobs. Meanwhile, crowdfunding supporters will not decrease their requirements for
the activity because of the volunteering devote, and the project result will directly interfere with
their perception of the fundraisers. Therefore, Some fans, even have tens of thousands of followers
on social media, still, hesitate to become fundraisers of crowdfunding: “Although I’ve attended
many events of my idol, met many other fans, and many people think I’m famous in the community,
I’m still reluctant to organize crowdfunding campaigns. I don’t want to stand out or give other fans
too much expectation. I might be blamed if I don’t do well.” (P9)

6.1.2 Not Organizing a Specific Event. Deterrents of becoming a fundraiser not only refer to the
fact that some fans do not want to become fundraisers. Another phenomenon in fan-idol crowd-
funding is that some experienced fundraisers refuse to launch crowdfunding events.
Some idols are not famous, so their fans can only support a limited amount of money. Therefore,
only the activity agreed within the fan community as the most important one will be set as the
aim for crowdfunding: “She belongs to that idol group (SNH48), so the most important thing for her
is the voting activity every year. Therefore, during the voting period, we only hold crowdfunding for
the voting but not for other activities.” (P3)
On the other hand, for idols with a large number of fans, their supporters have more freedom in
selecting crowdfunding aims. fundraisers are not interested in several projects because of unneces-
sary: “Because he has many fans, we generally don’t worry too much about sales. We don’t crowdfund
for commercial sales, which can be done spontaneously by fans or other large fan organizations. We
only have crowdfunding for gifting and promotion.” (P2)
6.2 Deterrents of Supporting a Project

Even though fan-idol crowdfunding campaigns aim to support idols, fans may have concerns about
whether or not to support a crowdfunding project, focusing on four main areas: trust, practicality,
necessity, and monetary budget.
6.2.1 Trust. Sometimes the fan community might diverge into different groups and fans may not
trust a community fundraiser because of their daily behavior or poor performance in previous
crowdfunding activities: “Because he embezzled funds last time, I would not participate in his crowd-
funding project again.” (P11) Furthermore, some fans may decide to launch their own crowdfunding
campaigns because of the mistrust of the fundraiser: “I felt that they (the fundraisers) could not pre-
pare gifts very well and they did not really care my idol, so I decided to held crowdfunding by myself
but not give money to them.” (P2)
6.2.2 Practicality. Fans may not agree that some crowdfunding projects are useful to their idols.
Thus, they may refuse those for promotions: “He is an actor. I do not think these promotions are
important than his TV series and films.” (P8) Others decline to crowdfund because they feel these
activities are meaningless to his idol and it only fulfills the fans’ own desires: “Honestly, does he
need these newspaper advertisements, magazine covers, and billboards right now? Not at all! I think
it’s the fans who are forcing him to fulfill their wishes and not think about his feelings.” (P7)
6.2.3 Necessity. Some activities are not necessarily to be completed through crowdfunding, while
individuals can also support their idols by themselves, such as voting, buying products endorsed by
their idols, or buying albums: “Like buying albums, I can buy as many as I want. I don’t understand
why I should give money to the fan organization to buy it together.” (P10)
6.2.4 Monetary Budget. Another important factor that hinders fans from supporting their idol
through crowdfunding is the monetary budget. Many fans are young and have limited or even
zero income. Therefore, they felt difficulties when they were facing a call to fundraising: “I am
a student, and I only have a couple of hundred RMB per month in addition to my living expenses.
Sometimes, at the end of the month, although I really want to participate in this crowdfunding, I can’t
afford to food if I do, so I have to give up.” (P5)
7 RQ4: INCENTIVES IN FAN-IDOL CROWDFUNDING

To enhance the enthusiasm of the participants, several special design features are introduced in
fan-idol crowdfunding, i.e., immediate rewards, competition among supporters, and competition
with other idols, which brings repeat donations from supporters.

Fig. 4. The interface of fan-idol crowdfunding platform, i.e., TAOBA. 1) The time until the end of the cam-
paign. 2) The fundraising progress proportional to the goal. 3) The amount of raised money. 4) The number
of participants(including repeat participants). 5) The authenticated information of the fundraiser on the plat-
form and the description of the crowdfunding project. 6) The minimum amount for support. 7) “Immediately
buy”, i.e., support the project. 8) The ranking of participants according to their contributions. 9) The crowd-
funding ranking of idols. 10) Click the button for more detailed information about the competition. 11) Line
graph of crowdfunding amount over time. 12) The amount of fundraising for each idol over time.
7.1 Immediate Rewards

In fan-idol crowdfunding, supporters do not receive any profit from their donations. The target
activities they aim to achieve are often months later or even half a year later. Therefore, to incentive
supporters to donate money, some fans might set non-profitable rewards for supporters when
they reach a goal. These rewards are always additional funds to support the crowdfunding project,
which are still used for idols.
The notification of immediate rewards is not published before the crowdfunding starts, while
they are treated as incentives during the campaign period when some fans want to increase others’
engagement: “This always happens in a critical time, such as we can not meet our goal or there are
just a few contributions for a long time. They will post on Chaohua and everyone can see that. In a
fixed period of time, say one hour, no matter how much money we spend in the crowdfunding, then a
rich fan was willing to add on the same amount of money in the pool.” (P5). Instead of waiting for the
activity to be completed, supporters can perceive a positive response after paying money, which
increases their desire to contribute: “I had only invested enough money to buy one album. But during
the event, I could invest the same money to buy two albums! I earned this money for my idol!”(P4)
7.2 Competition Among Supporters

In fan-idol crowdfunding, the ranking among participants is highlighted on the application, which
is shown in Figure 4. All supporters can judge how much they have contributed to the campaign.
They can also know how much money has been provided by others, which brings competition
among all crowdfunding supporters.
In contrast to supporters of traditional crowdfunding campaigns, who do not know each other
in advance [23], users of fan-idol crowdfunding campaigns know each other well, or at least they
have a strong sense of community before they participate. Similar to the idiom “keeping up with
the Joneses” [51], supporters will take other supporters’ contribution as a benchmark to determine

their own donations: “I really care about mianzi1 , so I always follow the ranking board during the
crowdfunding, and I don’t want to lose to other fans. At least I should spend more than some of my
friends. Then others will agree that I am truly dedicated to my idol.” (P9)
7.3 Interactions with Other Fan Communities

Another additional feature of fan-idol crowdfunding is the competition among several fan com-
munities. The platform enables several projects to start and end simultaneously, while the overall
crowdfunding progress is available at the interface of each project (Figure 4.9 to 12). Fundraisers
from different fan communities will consult with each other to reach a consensus on how to or-
ganize the crowdfunding campaign. The goal of these projects can either be the same, such as
participating in the same voting activities, or be different, i.e., activities happen at close time.
There is some conflict of interest between idols, especially for those with similar images. They
might compete for resources and awards, which results in quarrels and conflicts between fans as
well. Therefore, when a crowdfunding campaign takes the form of a confrontation between idols,
there is a very strong willingness on the part of fans to participate: “He and my idol have been in
competition since their debut. They work for the same agency company and the company never skews
towards my idol. I’m not keen on crowdfunding campaigns, but I’ll definitely participate if it’s a battle
against him. It would be humiliating to lose.” (P10) On the other hand, the results of such contest can
predict the final outcome of computing activities, i.e., if all of crowdfunding projects are launched
for the same voting activity, then fans may consider that the victory in crowdfunding will lead to
a success in the voting: “That time we were battling with three other idols, meaning we needed to
raise more money than the sum of them. The three idols were pretty popular, so I thought we had to
win, no matter what. If we win this PK, we would be more confident of winning the final contest.” (P3)
Quantitative data support this qualitative finding. Crowdfunding campaigns of SNH48 have
been classified as PK events or non-PK events, where competitions with other idols are involved
in PK events. The classification helps us identify the two types of fan crowdfunding activities and
examine the influence of the competition between fan communities on fan-idol crowdfunding. In
the year 2019, there were 2517 non-PK events and 976 PK events in total. We compute the average
fund money of these two kinds of events and observe a significant difference (t = 2.572, p = 0.0117)
between them. We have also illustrated the top 10 players to demonstrate the trend. Besides fans of
No.2 idol, the rest nine fan communities have a high amount of financial contribution in PK events
than non-PK events (Figure 6). The results suggest that fans are more motivated in crowdfunding
when existing external stimuli from other fan communities.
8 RQ5: FOLLOW-UP AUDIT

In fan-idol crowdfunding, supporters do not receive any real reward during the entire campaign.
The transaction between supporters and fundraisers is not a one-shot deal, They care about whether
their money has been used as they want. Nevertheless, current fan-idol crowdfunding platforms
do not support an official auditing function for supporters to check the use of funds. Out of this
imperative need, the fan community has developed several methods for auditing, including third-
party monitoring and disclosure of fund usage.
8.1 Third-party Monitoring

Information about crowdfunding projects will be removed from platforms once it is finished. How-
ever, there will be a gap between the time of crowdfunding campaigns and the time for conducting
1 The outside ‘face’ of people to show their reputation, pride, or self-respect to the world in social contexts [44]

30000
Average amount /RMB

20000
10000
0
PK NonPK
Type
Fig. 5. Mean of the amount of financial contribution between PK and non PK crowdfunding events in 2019.
250000
Average amount of top 10/RMB
200000
150000 Type
NonPK
100000 PK
50000
0
No.1 No.2 No.3 No.4 No.5 No.6 No.7 No.8 No.9 No.10
Idols
Fig. 6. Difference of the average amount of financial contribution between PK and non-PK crowdfunding
events for the top 10 idols in 2019.
Fig. 7. Public statistic of crowdfunding campaigns on jzb48.com.
the targeted activities, e.g., some fan organization might launch a crowdfunding campaign for vot-
ing activities half a year in advance. Therefore, some malicious fan organizations may cheat on the
amount of money they receive and take it for their own profits. To deal with the situation, some

members in fan communities have kept a tally of all money coming in with crowdfunding, which
ensures that fundraisers cannot corrupt money directly.
One of our interviewees (P11) has collected crowdfunding data of his idols and publishes online,
which has been shown in Figure 7: “We want to prevent fundraisers from embezzling these funds, and
we want to give us fans an open platform to verify the authenticity of the crowdfunding.” (P11) Mean-
while, he also mentioned that the public crowdfunding platforms improve transparency in the use
of funds: “Previously, there were come fundraising happened on e-commerce platforms, like Taobao,
but we didn’t know how much money the fundraiser received. But now we have a public fundraising
platform, and it is easier for us to statistic how much our fans are supporting our idols.” (P11)
Simultaneously, such open audits also lead to discordant factors among fan groups because
it is clear that how other fans devote for their idols’ activities. For example, jzb48.com publicly
display cumulative crowdfunding amounts, and fans may want to increase their investment in
supporting their idols when they fall behind others: “If we find that another idol has received a
lot of crowdfunding support, we will also organize a crowdfunding campaign as soon as possible. We
don’t want to fall behind the other idols so quickly.” (P3)
8.2 Disclosure of Fund Usage

Apart from knowing how much money fundraisers have collected from crowdfunding, members
in the fan community, not only supporters of the crowdfunding project, will require fundraisers
to disclose the detail about how they use the money. Even receipts and some other proof should
be provided to show the fund money has been used correctly: “I paid special attention to how the
money is spent after each crowdfunding campaign, and I always carefully checked each item. After
all, these are our contributions to our idols, and I would be very, very angry if they were embezzled.
If other fans found something suspicious, we would ask for more evidence and explanation. If there is
an issue, then the organizer will not be able to stay in the fan community.” (P6) Fan communities do
not consider that the money belongs to the fundraisers, but it is the whole community’s money.
Meanwhile, the public flow of money also allows people to compare different organizers’ ability
to use money, which can lead to conflicts within the fan community: “I sometimes compare the use
of our funds with other fan communities. Why did other organizers prepare very nice decorations, but
our billboard is still ugly after spending so much money? I’d be a little angry with the fundraiser.” (P9)
9 DISCUSSION
In this study, we investigated a new form of crowdfunding, fan-idol crowdfunding, which differs
from traditional crowdfunding in multiple aspects. From the combined qualitative and quantita-
tive research, we have found that the fan-idol crowdfunding does not belong to the definition
and the categorization of traditional crowd funding, which can be classified into two categories:
commercial crowdfunding, which aims to fund the development of commercial products or ser-
vices for further profit, and philanthropic crowdfunding [7], which aims to contribute charitable
activities and help the underprivileged without any profit [48]. The fan-idol crowdfunding differs
from them due to its unique character that both the donor and the fundraiser can not benefit fi-
nancially from the activity itself. In addition, there are the following factors distinguishing this
fan-idol crowdfunding from traditional crowdfunding projects (Table 2).
9.1 Relationship Between Fundraisers and Beneficiaries

The unique relationship between fundraisers and beneficiaries is what makes the fan-idol crowd-
funding special. In fan-idol crowdfunding, the fundraiser and the beneficiary of the project are al-
ways different or must be different. This is quite dissimilar to commercial crowdfunding in which

Commercial crowdfunding Philanthropic crowdfunding

fan-idol crowdfunding
Entrepreneur crowdfunding Medical crowdfunding
Relationships between Same person
No close/realistic relationship
fundraisers and Same person Acquaintances or friends
Fan of the beneficiary
beneficiaries Nonprofit organizations
Donor’s benefit Profitable Non-Profitable Non-Profitable
Early stage cost Saving themselves (fundraisers) Promoting idols’ popularity
Funding purpose Expand awareness of work Help acquaintances or friends Integrat resources
Form connections Informal and formal charities Increase community identity
Platform Websites mostly Websites mostly Mobile apps only
Validation of the Reporting the use of funds
Delivering rewards Information updates
use of funds Third-party audit websites
Table 2. Comparison of traditional and fan-idol crowdfunding
these two parties are always the same person or organization [7]. Moreover, these two parties can-
not have any personal or close relationship; otherwise, the campaign will not be considered trust-
worthy among the fan community. However, in philanthropic crowdfunding, fundraisers have
to reveal their connections [33] with beneficiaries to verify with donors that how the campaign
would contribute to those people who need help [48]. The relationship between fundraisers and
beneficiaries indicates the unique mechanism of fan-idol crowdfunding.
Crowdfunding participants consider that their behaviors are independent and spontaneous.
They are very resistant to the involvement of the idols themselves or related interested parties,
or they will feel manipulated by the beneficiary. Once the participant of related interested parties
has been observed, even only donating money in the crowdfunding campaign, the fan community
will feel deceived, and it will seriously influence the reputation of the idol [47]. Since fundraisers’
identity is public on social media, fan communities can monitor whether the relationship exists
between raisers and beneficiaries through public information and ensure that the crowdfunding
campaign is independent. Fan-idol crowdfunding provides another application scenario for crowd-
funding technology. This phenomenon suggests that crowdfunding should not be restricted to an
extension of offline fundraising but can be also be used for other online community collaborations
when they have financial needs.
9.2 Benefits for Participating in Crowdfunding

Another distinguishable property in fan-idol crowdfunding is that both fundraisers and supporters
are altruistic. At least, they do not receive any material rewards. Their aims, both for creating and
participating in crowdfunding, are to make their idols better, including getting a higher ranking
in competition, promoting in social media or offline activities, buying products endorsed by idols,
and sending gifts to idols or their colleagues and friends.
Surely fans from the crowdfunding are not purely egoless, while they also want feedback on
spirituality in response to their dedication, such us their idols becoming popular, more and more
people joining the fan community, and their idol getting opportunities to appear in movies and
TV series. Compared to other crowdfunding, fan-idol crowdfunding has a more extended payback
period. Because the development of an idol is not only determined by crowdfunding campaigns
but also many other factors in the entertainment industry, therefore, some of our interviewees
indicated that they were only looking for psychological comfort by contributions to crowdfunding
campaigns. They felt good if they express their support to idols by participating in such activities.
For crowdfunding activities, money and reward are not the only benefits that fundraisers and
supporters are looking for. Even though in traditional crowdfunding, we already observe that other
non-profitable factors motivate both fundraisers and supporters to participate in crowdfunding.

The practices of fan-idol crowdfunding further reinforce this point. When designing crowdfund-
ing campaigns, fundraisers should consider more about non-material benefits for supporters to
encourage them to fund the events.
9.3 Social Relationships on Existing Social Network

Fan-idol crowdfunding utilizes existing social relationships within fan communities, and these
relationships are consistent with fan-idol crowdfunding. Fan communities have already been or-
ganized on many social media (i.e., Weibo) and instant messaging (i.e., WeChat) [32, 35]. With the
help of overlap between online social networks [54], fans can easily initiate, organize, promote,
and locate a crowdfunding activity for their idols. With the spreading effects of social media and
other online platforms, these crowdfunding activities also help the idols to gain publicity and ben-
efit from the exposure to a broader audience. The trending of mobile platforms and mobile pay [46]
promotes the shift from computer devices to mobile devices. Users can easily finish the payment
with their mobile payment platforms. Because these overlapping social media and mobile payment
platforms are all mobile-based, popular fan-idol crowdfunding platforms in China include Owhat,
Modian, and Taoba are also all mobile-based.
Previous studies [31] have discussed the role of community in crowdfunding. Traditional crowd-
funding provides social connections for supporters to discuss the progress of the project and share
common interests with each other when they are considered a member of the community after
donating money [23]. However, these social relationships are not targeted at the object of crowd-
funding campaigns, and social interactions are created after participating in the campaign. We
find that other than building communities for crowdfunding, we may better use crowdfunding
in those communities where social relationships have been well developed. These existing rela-
tionships may better deliver crowdfunding information to target users, which will improve the
efficiency of crowdfunding.
9.4 Autonomous Collaboration Among Fan Communities

Trust between fundraisers and supporters in fan-idol crowdfunding is not just influenced by ac-
tivities during the period of fundraising. Because fundraisers will repeatedly create crowdfunding
campaigns for different projects. Their performance in the previous campaigns and after these
campaigns are significant credibility factors in crowdfunding. If fundraisers cannot provide infor-
mation to prove that they use the funded money responsibly, then they will not gain any support
for crowdfunding campaigns in the future.
In particular, fan-idol crowdfunding is an autonomous collaboration among fan communities [32].
Fundraisers and supporters share the same identity of the community, while they just take differ-
ent responsibilities in the collaborated activity. The fund money does not belong to fundraisers
but to all fans who participate in the campaign. That is why other members in fan communities
would volunteer for auditing the usage of fund money.
Traditional fan community activity, including online discussion, creating and sharing fanworks,
and updating idols’ public profile, are always limited within fan communities and hardly influence
the idol’s career. Fan-idol crowdfunding provides fan communities with an opportunity to take
actions beyond online communities. With a large amount of money, usually around tens of thou-
sands of dollars, fan communities are able to help idols gain better popularity (including online
and offline promotions and voting activities), completing commercial tasks, or establishing good
relationships with other staff in the industry by sending gifts, fan communities have effectively
made the public to notice these events because of the huge scale and influenced public perception
of their idols. Even though it is hard to evaluate how much these activities affect idols’ careers,
fan communities have obtained self-satisfaction by conducting these activities. The community

identity has been strengthened because they feel that they are deciding their idols’ future, further
reinforcing these autonomous collaborations.
On the other hand, fan-idol crowdfunding releases high control over idols from their agency
company. Agencies always have a strong influence on the artists, which leads to scandals [34] and
restricted lifestyle [42]. Since the fans have the opportunity to manage their idols’ activity, the
agency’s rights are partially shifted to a third party, and the artists do have leverage against the
agency because of the support from their fans.
9.5 Controversies and Implications

Fan-idol crowdfunding has been questioned that what could the fans gain from such new forms
of supporting stars. The continuity and legitimacy of fan crowdfunding form are with ambiguity
and could lead to potential issues that are related to both the fan and the idols.
From the fan’s perspective, it mostly concerns their emotional and financial contribution to their
idols. First, the young age nature of the fans [10] brings the possibility of irrational purchases [1]
leading to the ethical question of if it is appropriate to gather money directly from an underage
audience who might have immature fanaticism for their idols. Second, the majority of initiators of
such events are also fans, which does not have any certificate or legal guarantee for conducting the
financial activity. It has also been reported that the agency would pretend or collaborate with the
crowdfunding initiators to maximize the revenue. The lack of supervision or guidance weakens the
legitimacy of such self-organized volunteering events. Last but not least, such popularity contest
has always been criticized [6]. It creates the superficial pursuit of beauty and fame, which could
potentially influence under-aged adolescents by influencing their value and purpose of life [30].
Such a social dilemma of the pop star will always remain a controversial aspect of the idol industry.
Scholars have widely raised the concerns of privacy, and personal information [15, 52].
From the idol’s perspective, it generates another type of concerns that are related to the evo-
lution of a young star’s career. Even though traditional pop stars need to interact with their fans
during offline activities, they are evaluated on their work, performance, and popularity on social
media. However, since the emergence of fan-idol crowdfunding, especially after the auditing web-
sites, it is too obvious to show their commercial value. Agency companies receive timely feedback
on their investment in these idols, making the turnover of practitioners in the industry too rapid.
Once idols cannot be supported by fans in the short term, the agency company will soon alternate
them with other young pop stars. Pop stars have to put more effort into maintaining the rela-
tionship between the fan community and themselves. For example, their image might be overly
sexualized, which has been controversial for society [21]. On the other hand, idols and their agen-
cies cannot control the behavior of their fans. As the fan community controls over more money,
the potential for unpredictable consequences gradually increases, and their actions are considered
related to the reputation of their idols, which is a hidden danger to idols.
To avoid limitations which have greatly affected the development of fans-idol crowdfunding,
we detail two considerations for implementation or future exploration:
Limiting the amount of funds. Crowdfunding platforms should consider applying more reg-
ulations on crowdfunding campaigns, especially limiting the amount of donating money from
adolescents or those who are can hardly manage finance. On the one hand, this will help fans to
participate in crowdfunding campaigns rationally without excessive consumption. On the other
hand, it will also eliminate the comparison among fans during crowdfunding.
Disclosure of usage of fund money. Even though fan communities have created several meth-
ods to audit funding campaigns, some embezzlement incidents happen in fan communities, as the
amount of fund money is increasing year by year, reaching 2 million dollars per project [45]. The
security of a huge amount of money cannot be ensured by the relationship and trust between fans.

As the fan-idol crowdfunding is essentially a collaborative action among fan communities, we sug-
gest crowdfunding platforms to consider using blockchain systems [16], which enables peers to
invest collaboratively and trade their investments securely. Each member of fan communities can
better understand how money has been used and can more actively participate in the activities to
support their idols rather than simply providing money.
10 CONCLUSION
In this paper, we study fan-idol crowdfunding, a new form of fundraising that appears in fan com-
munities. Using observations, qualitative interviews, and quantitative data analysis, we examine
the phenomenon and practices of fan-idol crowdfunding, including the crowdfunding mechanism,
the motivations and deterrents for fans to participate in the crowdfunding, incentive designs in the
crowdfunding, and credibility maintenance. The fan-idol crowdfunding enables fan communities
to better express their supports to their idols and influence their idols’ careers, highlighting the
significance of online fandom. We also analyze the primary elements of fan-idol crowdfunding
include the identity of fundraisers, fundraisers, and supporters’ motivations, and their deterrents.
These observations allow us to examine how crowdfunding designs have influenced fan engage-
ment and how follow-up auditing from fan communities can maintain the credibility of crowdfund-
ing campaigns. Finally, we find high-frequent competitive crowdfunding events between different
fan communities incentivize higher financial contributions to fan communities. Future researchers
in the fandom community and crowdfunding can consider further exploring interactions across
different communities and how these interactions influence fandom activities.
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17924662110272186499

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Idols That You Decide: Understanding the Phenomenon and

Practices of Fan-idol Crowdfunding

YE WANG, ETH Zurich

ACM Reference Format:

, Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: May 2021.

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3914398

, Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: May 2021.

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3914398

2 BACKGROUND AND RELATED WORK

, Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: May 2021.

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3914398

2.2 Online Fandom Community

2.3 Fan Crowdfunding

, Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: May 2021.

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3914398

3.1 Data Collection: Crowdfunding Observations

, Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: May 2021.

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3914398

3.2 Data Collection: Interviews

ID Gender Age Location Country Also fundraisers

3.3 Data Collection: Crowdfunding Data of SNH48

, Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: May 2021.

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3914398

4 RQ1: FUNDRAISERS IN FAN-IDOL CROWDFUNDING

4.2 Reputation of Fundraisers

, Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: May 2021.

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3914398

4.3 Roles of Fundraisers

5 RQ2: CROWDFUNDING MOTIVATIONS

5.1 Resource Integration

, Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: May 2021.

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5.2 Positive Feedback

, Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: May 2021.

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3914398

5.3 Collective Activities

5.4 Community Engagement

, Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: May 2021.

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3914398

6 RQ3: CROWDFUNDING DETERRENTS

6.1 Deterrents of Becoming a Fundraisers

6.1.1 Not becoming a fundraiser. As we discussed in Section 4, crowdfunding administrators’ iden-

, Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: May 2021.

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3914398

6.2 Deterrents of Supporting a Project

7 RQ4: INCENTIVES IN FAN-IDOL CROWDFUNDING

, Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: May 2021.

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7.1 Immediate Rewards

7.2 Competition Among Supporters

, Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: May 2021.

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7.3 Interactions with Other Fan Communities

8 RQ5: FOLLOW-UP AUDIT

8.1 Third-party Monitoring

, Vol. 1, No. 1, Article . Publication date: May 2021.

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Average amount /RMB

Fig. 7. Public statistic of crowdfunding campaigns on jzb48.com.