Does gender matter? Evidence from crowdfunding

Abstract

The lack of resources and support for female entrepreneurs and their ventures lowers their chances of success and ultimately leads to the underrepresentation of female led ventures in the economy. Thus, to remedy this problem, it is crucial for female entrepreneurs to attract potential investors. The latter may use in their decision-making process cues such as the number of supporters, which provides social validation of the ventures. To test this, we analyze 2275 reward-based crowdfunding projects to investigate the effects of female entrepreneurs’ presence, and the consequences of social validation (i.e., number of supporters), on their crowdfunding success.