How to Convince the Crowd: An Impression Management Approach

Abstract

Crowdfunding allows entrepreneurs to fund their business projects by attracting crowd investors to provide relatively small financial amounts via a standardized internet-based platform. Research on this topic is still limited, especially considering determinants that actually "convince the crowd" to fund someone else's business idea. This study examines impression management strategies as drivers for crowdfunding success. Based on a sample of 264 crowdfunding campaigns from Kickstarter, we develop and test hypotheses concerning linguistic behaviors affecting the likelihood of raising funds and the number of project backers. We find that crowd investors prefer high levels of positive language patterns and moderate levels of promoting innovativeness.