From Feelings to Funding: The Moderating Role of Category Membership in Crowdfunding Participation

Lohmar, David; Schäper, Thomas; Nüesch, Stephan

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of emotions conveyed in crowdfunding campaigns on the commitment of backers. Based on language expectancy theory and research on emotional psychology, we propose the effect of emotions depends on campaign category membership and varies between social and commercial crowdfunding campaigns. Empirical analyses of 12,862 Indiegogo campaigns using EmoRoBERTa, a pre-trained neural network algorithm specifically designed to identify emotions, reveal that gratitude and optimism have opposite effects on crowdfunding participation for social and commercial entrepreneurs. In particular, optimism is positively associated with backer participation in social and negatively in commercial campaigns. Counterintuitively, gratitude is positively associated with backer participation in commercial but negatively in social campaigns. Contrasting our analysis, we further examine the link between a factual, neutral tone and crowdfunding participation. Interestingly, a neutral tone has a positive relationship with crowdfunding participation in commercial campaigns. The association reverses for social campaigns.