Effects of sentiment and emotion of campaign pitch on crowdfunding performance: A cross-cultural comparison

Abstract

This study examines the effects of two extreme sentiments (positive vs. negative) and eight types of emotion (anger, fear, anticipation, trust, surprise, sadness, joy, and disgust) implied by the wording of the campaign pitch on the outcomes of crowdfunding, and how these effects would vary according to cultural differences (Western vs. Eastern). We analyze a sample drawn from 17,289 crowdfunding projects on Kickstarter in the "design" and "technology" category to examine how feelings can affect the success, the number of backers, and pledged amounts for crowdfunding projects. We find three regularities by using propensity score match to map Western campaigns to Eastern ones. First, negative sentiment is adversely associated with the success probability but positively related to backer count in the Eastern culture subsample. Second, specific emotions have a larger impact on crowdfunding success among Western culture projects. Third, the statistical significance and direction of the concerning effects differ across the two cultures. Our findings stay robust when we add more controls in a stepwise way. Hence, the study contributes to the literature and provides suggestions for practitioners by exploring the role of derived feelings in the crowdfunding campaign pitch and the entrepreneurial pitch at the early financing stage.