Emotion regulation and cheap talk as signaling strategies: Evidence from crowdfunding for Ukraine

Crowdfunding, as enabled by donors worldwide, has played a critical role in financially supporting military forces, NGOs, humanitarian groups, and civilians in the Ukraine-Russia Crisis. This global mobilization underscores the evolving dynamics in the modern geopolitical landscape, emphasizing the transformative power of online collective action in fundraising and organizing. This study draws on signaling theory to pinpoint success indicators in crowdfunding for Ukraine projects on GoFundMe. Recognized as an effective explanatory framework, signaling theory is used as it bridges fundraising tactics with donation behavior in crowdfunding contexts. Particularly, the research examines how emotions and semantics contributed to (or hindered) fundraising success through sentiment analysis, topic modeling, and paragraph vectors. Findings revealed that trust showcased in fundraisers’ texts and videos amplified donations. Conversely, expressions of sadness deterred donations. Furthermore, the strategic deployment of an anti-Putin narrative notably enhanced fundraising results, but this strategy was way more likely to be deployed by fundraisers based in the United States. The distinct linguistic patterns of US campaigns were so pronounced that machine learning classifiers could predict the fundraiser’s origin (US vs. non-US) with 82% accuracy based solely on language. Overall, the study sheds light on the importance of emotion regulation and “cheap talk” as functional signaling strategies that facilitate value alignment. It provides new theoretical insights and methodological feasibility of examining how strategic communication affects financial outcomes in crowdfunding.