“…Prior empirical and theoretical work on crowdfunding has focused on the factors that affect success on reward‐based crowdfunding platforms that only offer AON crowdfunding including Kickstarter (Belleflamme et al., ; Chemla and Tinn, ; Colombo, Franzoni, & Rossi‐Lamastra, ; Mollick, ; Mollick & Kuppuswamy, ). Our theoretical setting differs from prior and contemporaneous work on crowdfunding and signaling (Chakraborty and Swinney, ) by examining the role of funding model choice as a signal in the crowdfunding campaign. While most prior studies focus on crowd and project characteristics, such as gender (Greenberg & Mollick, ) or geographical origin (Agrawal, Catalini, & Goldfarb, , ; Lin & Viswanathan, ), our contribution lies in examining the choice of AON versus KIA relative to different project characteristics, the impact on the crowd's willingness to pledge money, and the ultimate campaign outcome.…”