Navigating the crowdfunding landscape: a study of knowledge trajectories based on main path analysis

Purpose – Crowdfunding (CF) has become an increasingly popularmeans of financing for entrepreneurs and has
attracted significant attention fromboth researchers and practitioners in recent years.The purpose of this study is
to investigate the core content and knowledge diffusion paths in the CF field. Specifically, we aim to identify the
main topics and themes that have emerged in this field and to trace the evolution of CF knowledge over time.

Design/methodology/approach – This study employs co-word clustering and main path analysis (MPA) to
examine the historical development of CF research based on 1,528 journal articles retrieved from the Web of
Science Core Collection database.

Findings – The results of the analysis reveal that CF research focuses on seven themes: sustainability,
entrepreneurial finance, entrepreneurship, fintech, social entrepreneurship, social capital, and microcredits.
The analysis of the four main paths reveals that equity CF has been the dominant topic in the past years.
Recently, CF research has tended to focus on topics such as fintech, the COVID-19 pandemic, competition,
Brexit, and policy response.

Originality/value – To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first attempt to explore knowledge diffusion
dynamics in the CF field. Overall, the study offers a structure for analyzing the paths through which knowledge
is diffused, enabling scholars to effectively manage a large volume of research papers and gain a deeper
understanding of the historical, current, and future trends in the development of CF.