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This study aims to investigate how the language used in US Title II equity crowdfunding campaign descriptions relates to campaign success.

Data on >3,200 equity offerings from 12 Title II platforms was obtained from 2013 to 2016. The aspects of the campaign descriptions that are focused on are tone and two measures of readability: information quantity – the amount of information available to the investor and information quality – the ease of understanding of the passage of text. Tobit regressions with sector-clustered standard errors are used for estimation while controlling for company-specific variables, market sentiment and platform, regional, sector and time effects. Results are robust to alternative estimation approaches.

Inverse U-shaped relationships exist between information quantity, information quality and tone and Title II equity crowdfunding campaign success. Overall, less is more as it appears that an intermediate level of information – quantity, quality and tone – is optimal in terms of being a factor that contributes to equity crowdfunding campaign success.

Extends the use of textual analysis to the equity crowdfunding environment in the USA where such analysis is lacking and provides empirical evidence that the language used (e.g. sentiment) in US Title II equity-based crowdfunding campaign descriptions does influence campaign success. It provides empirical evidence of and extends the concept of information overload to the entrepreneurial finance sub-field and indicates tone may be an additional information attribute to consider in this context as contributing to overload.

This paper aims to examine the impact of national culture on private credit availability. The authors particularly focus on the masculinity dimension, as previous studies have not been able to reconcile this dimension in terms of results aligning with expectations.

Least-squares regression with country-cluster standard errors is used to estimate the impact of a nation’s cultural dimensions. Culture is assessed using Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions: masculinity, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, long-term orientation and indulgence. Estimation controls for country-level measures of economic growth and development, inflation, financial market development and the institutional, legal and bank environments. Data on more than 70 countries were collected from 2005 to 2014.

The authors find the masculinity dimension of culture has a significant negative impact on private credit access. Moreover, this result is driven by middle-income versus high-income countries. Interestingly, the authors also find the power distance dimension has a significant negative impact; however, this result is driven by high-income versus middle-income countries. Overall, these results are consistent with the authors’ argument that masculinity may be capturing traditionally defined gender roles, that masculinity (as the authors define it) is different from what power distance is capturing and that the impact of masculinity is influenced by a country’s economic stage.

The authors’ interpretation of masculinity, coupled with their results, presents researchers with an alternative perspective of a cultural dimension that previous studies have not been able to reconcile in terms of results aligning with expectations. Moreover, the authors show that the impact of the cultural dimensions on private credit differs for high- and middle-income countries, and thus has important implications.