Research on the Factors Influencing the Financing Performance of Rewarded Crowdfunding - Based on Project Multimodal Data Analysis

Abstract

An increasing number of rewarded crowdfunding platforms recommend that fundraisers post multimodal data to improve data diversity and attract investors’ attention. Project speech contains both textual modality (text) and acoustic modality (voice) data. This study aims to explore how linguistic style of the speech text and acoustic features of the speech voice influence the crowdfunding campaign performance from the perspective of emotional contagion. An econometric model to investigate the effects of emotional cues from fundraisers’ speech on rewarded crowdfunding performance is constructed, and an empirical analysis with 21996 projects data in Kickstarter is conducted. The findings demonstrate that both acoustic emotional cues (voice pitch and speech rate) and textual emotional cues (intimate and perceptual language) have significant positive effect on the financing performance, while voice intensity is negatively related to financing performance. This investigation provides both theoretical implications for the literature of crowdfunding and practical implications for fundraisers.