Hedonic Signals in Crowdfunding

Abstract

This study draws on signaling theory to investigate the effect of hedonic signals in crowdfunding projects on funding performance. It compares the effect of hedonic signals across reward-, equity-, and donation-based crowdfunding platforms by combining archival data from 18 platforms and a large-scale panel of 64 experts that rate the strength of hedonic signals in 108 crowdfunding projects. Through the application of mixed linear modeling, the findings indicate a positive influence of stronger hedonic signals on funding performance. However, there are substantial differences across platform types. Increasing the strength of hedonic signals by one standard deviation increases funding performance by 28.9% on reward platforms, while there are no systematic effects on equity and donation platforms. This study contributes to existing crowdfunding research by clarifying the role of hedonic signals in crowdfunding and shedding light on the increasing need to better consider the characteristics of different crowdfunding platforms in crowdfunding research.