Open to everyone? The long tail of the peer economy: Evidence from Kickstarter

Peer-to-peer platforms remove entrance barriers characterizing traditional markets, thereby creating markets that are more democratized. Our work draws from the rich literature on the “long tail” to investigate how democratization of peer-to-peer markets affects distribution of demand. We utilize a natural experiment in the form of a policy change that occurred on Kickstarter.com and resulted in opening the market to more players, effectively raising the level of democratization. We examine how platform-openness affected the distribution of funds and backers across campaigns. Specifically, we ask whether removal of entrance barriers-which increased the quantity and variety of offers-shifted the demand from popular to niche offers (a long-tail effect). Our findings indicate that opening the platform shifted the demand towards the head: more funds and backers became concentrated in a smaller number of head-offers. We conclude that a more democratized peer-economy results in a less-even distribution of funds (a superstar effect).