Love at first sight: A text analytical study of campaign title impact on crowdfunding success

Abstract

crowdfunding has become an increasingly common source of financing for entrepreneurs, yet it entails fierce competition among campaigns on crowdfunding platforms. Previous research has investigated how crowdfunding success is affected by factors such as the campaign attributes creator information and online communication between creators and backers. Yet little work has addressed the effect of campaign titles on backers’ financial commitment and crowdfunding success. This study focuses on four textual characteristics (length, innovativeness, person deixis, and expression tone) of campaign titles and their influence on crowdfunding outcomes. The empirical analysis of 73,581 Indiegogo campaigns shows that title length has an inverted U-shaped effect on crowdfunding success. Words related to innovativeness and second person deixis in campaign titles increase the likelihood of crowdfunding success, while the expression of a pleading tone has a negative effect. Findings demonstrate the importance of campaign title and specific textual characteristics in attracting the attention of potential funders, providing theoretical and practical implications.