| dc.description.abstract | In light of the ever-increasing urgency to successfully tackle environmental challenges that
arise around the globe, growing attention is given to bottom-up approaches such as
sustainable grass-root movements, to incubate and foster disruptive change. Yet, despite
their salient importance, lack of financial resources has often brought such endeavors to an
abrupt halt. More recently, new hopes have been evoked by the practice of online
crowdfunding, which has slowly established itself as a new, alternative instrument to help
fill the funding gap for grass-root entrepreneurs.
Since crowdfunding itself and especially crowdfunding within a sustainability context is
currently still an under-researched field, this thesis intents to advance academic
understanding thereof by studying the potential of green crowdfunding platforms for
accelerating sustainability transitions within the energy regime. Against this background, this
paper complements the concepts of the Multi-Level Perspective with Business Ecosystem
theory to lay the theoretical groundwork that allows to systematically analyze the case study
of the Dutch crowdfunding platform Greencrowd.
Findings showcase that Greencrowd acts as leader of its respective ecosystem, aligning and
coordinating actors and activities in its immediate environment to enable green entrepreneurs
to not only gain access to funding, but, perhaps even more importantly, to secure societal
support and grant access to mainstream markets.
Due to this dualistic capacity, crowdfunding platforms seem to possess significant potential
to accelerate sustainability transitions. Yet, results also illustrate the dependency of this
value proposition on financial and political institutions that operate outside the direct control
of the crowdfunding platform. Thus, this thesis concludes, that in order to fully exploit their
potential, green crowdfunding platforms need to systematically nurture and strengthen their
ties with these stakeholders. Entering into close collaborations is regarded as highly
beneficial for all involved parties and might form the basis for a new, promising approach
towards managing sustainability transitions.
Keywords: Sustainability transition, Crowdfunding Platforms, Business Ecosystems, MultiLevel Perspective | |
