Roles of Narrative in Civic Crowdfunded Project: Linguistic Style, Message Substance, and Crowdfunding Success

Abstract

We explore how linguistic style and message substance influence persuasion in civic crowdfunding marketplaces in which written narrative pitch become a vital communication to attract private contributions to public goods and services. Very few empirical studies investigated differential effects of language style and message substance on funding performance of crowdfunding campaigns. We draw upon the dual process of persuasion as a theoretical base to identify a comprehensive set of linguistic style and message substance and to examine the role of such features in an emerging civic crowdfunding market. Drawing on elaboration likelihood model (ELM), we operationalize the linguistic style of the narrative pitch as language power and message substance as issue-relevant argument quality. In this study, we examine how characteristics of both style and message are related to the outcome of civic crowdfunded projects. Our results show that funding outcomes can be improved with psychological language dimensions (i.e., positive affective and perceptual language). However, extensive use of social language does not help project creators to increase their chance of funding performance; but instead, such language reduces the likelihood of project success. Additionally, message substance or issue-relevant information such as money and risk language influences funding outcome.