The Persuasive Impact of Text and Audio Features on Technology Crowdfunding Campaigns: An Empirical Study on Kickstarter

Abstract

In technology-focused crowdfunding, campaign outcomes are connected to the strength and delivery of a persuasive message. Owing to the technical complexity of these projects, persuasive elements can be found in features scattered across the project's textual description and video pitch. To date, existing research has systematically examined the influence of textual attributes, but the impact of auricular attributes and their joint persuasive effect is not yet clearly understood. To investigate these gaps, our study uses text and audio features extracted from a dataset of 3589 reward-based technology crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter. The results indicate that both text (brevity, readability, and sentiment) and audio (tone neutrality, audio contour, frequency, and harmonics) features of a campaign's message, positively influence crowdfunding outcomes. This influence is more pronounced when they are considered in conjunction. These results provide new theoretical insights for assessing persuasive message properties in a technology crowdfunding context. For entrepreneurs, the strength and delivery of the story put forward in technology crowdfunding are more noticeable when the joint effects of text and audio are considered.