Attention Across Borders: Investor Attention as a Driver of Cross-Border Equity Crowdfunding Investments

Abstract

Equity crowdfunding is an increasingly international form of digital platform-based entrepreneurial finance. With an unprecedented number of available international investment opportunities, it becomes relevant to ask what leads cross-border investors to invest in certain campaigns and not others. Building on attention literature, we theorize how investor attention drives cross-border investors’ investment choices. We test our hypotheses using a unique dataset of cross-border equity crowdfunding investments. We find that investor attention, as proxied by campaign visibility in investor countries and entrepreneur-investor co-nationality, has strong positive effects on cross-border investment tie formation, whereas national distances lose their importance in this digital setting.