The Wharton Consumer Cryptocurrency Confidence Index (Wharton c3i) is the first longitudinal measure designed to capture consumer perceptions and comfort with the cryptocurrency market. The index offers insights into consumer sentiment—an essential factor in crypto’s value—and helps researchers and practitioners track how perceptions shift in response to marketplace and macroeconomic events.
Reports
We will regularly publish specific reports based on the index as well as related data collections.
2024 Consumer Cryptocurrency Confidence Report
Tracking Crypto Diffusions Between Markets and Politics.
2023 Consumer Cryptocurrency Confidence Report
Background
Cryptocurrencies have gained increasing media attention and seen higher trading volume and prices, and applications as accepted currencies in main stream business. In contrast to official currencies, however, the value or exchange rates of cryptocurrencies are not managed by centralized institutions (e.g., the Federal Reserve), and in contrast to stocks, cryptocurrencies do not have intrinsic value (e.g., price-to-earnings ratio of stocks). Rather, the value of cryptocurrencies is necessarily intersubjective.
As such, their value is necessarily closely tied to the level of confidence that consumers feel are appropriate for cryptocurrencies.
In order to investigate consumers’ perceptions and opinions about cryptocurrencies, we aim to develop a Consumer Crypto Confidence Index (c3i) over time, a consumer-driven evaluation of crypto’s role, reliability, and signal value in the economy. We use this index to better understand the macro and microeconomic factors that drive consumers’ confidence in cryptocurrency, as well as the role of consumer confidence as a leading or lagging indicator of the realized value of cryptocurrencies in the market.
In so doing, we follow the pattern of many broad indicators of consumer sentiment, such as Michigan’s Consumer Confidence Index, which, while similarly subjective, constitute leading indicators of economic performance.
Wharton Launches Consumer Cryptocurrency Confidence Index
Sparked by grant awards by Analytics at Wharton and the Mack Institute for Innovation Management, the Wharton Marketing Department has recently developed the first index specifically designed to capture consumers’ perceptions of and comfort with the cryptocurrency market. The measure, called the “Consumer Cryptocurrency Confidence Index,” or Wharton c3i, was launched in January 2023, and since then is collected every month.
The initiative, led by Wharton Professors Dave Reibstein, John Zhang, Cait Lamberton and Visiting Professor Martin Paul Fritze of the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (Germany), saw the c3i as a necessary bridge between existing financial analysis and the lived experiences of consumers that are central in marketing research.
“There is a great deal of research about the financial markets’ response to cryptocurrency,” notes Reibstein. “We also know a good amount about attitudes of institutional investors, as captured by organizations like Binance Research. However, aside from single-shot surveys, we know very little about how consumers – the people who will ultimately determine whether crypto becomes a commonly-used tool in the market – view cryptocurrency, or how these perceptions change over time.”
Along with measures of confidence in cryptocurrency, modeled after the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, the survey also captures a range of consumer perceptions and beliefs about crypto. For example, the survey tracks consumers’ thinking about cryptocurrencies compared to other currencies, whether they perceive them as short-term speculations, or whether they see them as longer-term investments. Further, the index tracks consumers’ willingness to use cryptocurrency in various types of marketplace interactions, from payment to donation.
The longitudinal nature of the survey is also intended to help researchers better understand factors that may shift consumers’ confidence in cryptocurrency. Indeed, as major events in the marketplace as a whole unfold, the researchers hope to see whether cryptocurrency confidence may be a leading or lagging indicator of other economic measures. Future collaborations with Analytics at Wharton, Zhang says, may be critical in tapping this aspect of the data.
The team has developed an interactive research website that will offer monthly snapshots of key indicators as they change over time, as well as opportunities for researchers and practitioners to submit queries for consideration in subsequent index administrations. Beyond these baseline results they will release selected reports on specific insights derived from the data collections.
“Ideally,” Lamberton says, “we are able to create a community that cares not only about crypto as a monetary innovation, but also as a remarkably promising laboratory. Crypto may offer us the opportunity to understand new forms of trust, consumer behaviors that have not previously been examined, and the way that perceptions and uses for a new technology can evolve over time.”
“Crypto may offer us the opportunity to understand new forms of trust, consumer behaviors that have not previously been examined, and the way that perceptions and uses for a new technology can evolve over time.”
– Cait Lamberton
Professor of Marketing
Method
We collect a monthly convenience sample of at least N=1000 from US Prolific workers (participants 18 years and over).
For January-June 2023 for each data collection wave we excluded all potential participants from the pool that participated in one of the previous waves (e.g., for March participants from January and February cannot participate).
Starting from July 2023, we only exclude participants from the wave before (e.g., for July participants from June cannot participate).
Prior to analysis, we exclude duplicate IPs from our sample to reduce the risk of bots and fraudulent answers (Waggoner et al. 2019).
For the results directly reported on the website we employ US representative sample weighting (post-stratification; Valliant 1993) based on the following variables obtained from the US Consensus Bureau (www.census.gov): Age, gender, and region (as of July 1, 2022).
References:
- Waggoner, P. D., Kennedy, R., & Clifford, S. (2019). Detecting fraud in online surveys by tracing, scoring, and visualizing IP addresses. Journal of Open Source Software, 4(37), 1285.
- Valliant, R. (1993). Poststratification and conditional variance estimation. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 88(421), 89-96.
Team
Martin P. Fritze, Dr.
Professor of Marketing
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Martin P. Fritze is Professor of Marketing at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (Germany).
Professor Fritze research focus lies on understanding consumer behavior. He applies philosophy to explore the meaning of materiality in a digitized world.
Cait Lamberton, PhD
Professor of Marketing
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Cait Lamberton is the Alberto I Duran Presidential Distinguished Professor of Marketing at Wharton School and co-editor of the Journal of Marketing.
Her research is primary in consumer behavior, with particular interests in the sharing economy and marketplace dignity
David Reibstein, PhD
Professor of Marketing
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David Reibstein is the William S. Woodside Professor and Professor of Marketing, at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Reibstein’s research focuses on branding, nation branding, marketing metrics, product line decisions, and competitive marketing strategies, among other issues.
John Zhang, PhD
Professor of Marketing
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John Zhang is currently a Professor of Marketing and Tsai Wan-Tsai Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Zhang’s research focuses on pricing strategies, channel management, CRM strategies, luxury goods, and cryptopricing. Professor Zhang has published over 60 articles in many areas of marketing.
