Equity crowdfunding: a systematic review of the literature

Equity crowdfunding is an emerging area of research within the broader sphere of entrepreneurship. Since 2012, research activities are steadily advancing, providing the foundation for a promising field of research. Despite ongoing scientific discussions, equity crowdfunding research is still in its infancy and scholarly knowledge remains limited and fragmented. To bring clarity to this fragmented field and to further advance the scientific process, we conduct a systematic literature review of 113 journal contributions and gray papers, published between 2012 and 2017. Based on an in-depth analysis of identified publications, we describe the landscape of the equity crowdfunding field concentrating on two aspects. First, we conduct a descriptive analysis of equity crowdfunding research to illustrate the scientific development. Second, we categorize relevant contributions into five different perspectives: capital market, entrepreneur, institutional, investor, and platform and perform a thematic analysis to reveal dominant themes and sub-themes within each perspective. Our study highlights several promising directions for encouraging further advancements in equity crowdfunding research.