Emotional brightness and crowdfunding performance

Abstract

The use of emotions in the communication content of entrepreneurial projects on crowdfunding platforms has been associated with fundraising performance. Other studies have suggested that the extensive use of emotions can have a detrimental effect on their perception as a trustworthy information source. Bringing these two streams of literature together, we theorize that the level of emotional brightness—that is, the tone of a project's content on the continuum from negative to positive emotions—generates both perceptions of empathy and inauthenticity. The interplay between these perceptions produces an inverted U-shaped relationship between the level of emotional brightness of a crowdfunding project and the project's performance. Drawing on a dataset of 2500 Kickstarter projects, we find support for this hypothesis. We also find that the goal amount moderates this relationship because funders pay more attention to projects with higher goal amounts due to their salience; the higher the goal amount is, the steeper the inverted U-shape is. Finally, considering both written text (the description of the project) and images (the photo on the project's landing page), we find that the moderating effect of the project's goal amount is stronger for emotions conveyed through images than those conveyed through text. Our paper contributes to deepening the understanding of the relationship between emotions and crowdfunding performance by revealing the benefits and limitations of using emotions in crowdfunding projects. Attempts to manipulate an audience's perception by arousing its emotions are a double-edged sword that entrepreneurs should use cautiously.