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In this study, the authors sought to investigate how the implicit social ties of both project owners and potential backers are associated with crowdfunding project success.

Drawing on social ties theory and factors that affect crowdfunding success, in this research, the authors developed a model to study how project owners' and potential backers' implicit social ties are associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The proposed model was empirically tested with crowdfunding data collected from Kickstarter and social media data collected from Twitter. The authors performed the test using an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model with fixed effects.

The authors found that project owners' implicit social ties (specifically, their social media activities, degree centrality and betweenness centrality) are significantly and positively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. Meanwhile, potential project backers' implicit social ties (their social media activities and degree centrality) are negatively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The authors also found that project size moderates the effects of project owners' social media activities on projects' degrees of success.

This work contributes to the literature on crowdfunding by investigating how the implicit social ties of both potential backers and project owners on social media are associated with crowdfunding project success. This study extends the previous research on social ties' roles in explaining crowdfunding project success by including implicit social ties, while the literature explored only explicit social ties.

Crowdfunding is a relatively new alternative method of raising capital for new ventures. In recent years, crowdfunding has also gained prominence within the food industry. On the basis of signaling theory, this study aims to analyze the success factors of vegan crowdfunding campaigns, which remains unexplored in academia.

This study employs a logistic regression analysis on a sample of 200 vegan crowdfunding campaigns launched in Europe between 2014 and 2021 on the popular crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.

The results show that the number of images, comments and updates as well as the readability of project descriptions positively impact the success rate of vegan crowdfunding campaigns. Furthermore, the length of the project description has a negative effect, whereas the number of videos has no bearing on the success of vegan crowdfunding campaigns.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study pioneers examining the success factors of vegan crowdfunding campaigns. This study enriches the literature in several ways. First, this study contributes to an open debate on the success factors of crowdfunding. Second, this study provides knowledge about the factors that can favor the success of vegan initiatives. Third, this study confirms the usefulness of signaling theory as a theoretical framework for understanding vegan crowdfunding.

The purpose of this study is to analyze crowdfunding (CF) as new entrepreneurial finance (EF) tool and to predict the success of CF projects in the Middle East region.

This study was conducted in seven Middle Eastern countries (i.e. Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and UAE) in addition to serval CF platforms that are commonly used by crowd funders in this region (such as Kickstarter, GoFundMe, Beehive and Zoomal) with total members (195,193). A pilot sample of 20 units was used to validate and verify the research instrument of the study. The research sample consists of 1,910 respondents from the seven countries included in the study. The study emphasizes the partners, micro-structures, administrative conditions and CF advancement in the Middle East.

The findings reveal that CF’s presence positively impacts fundraising success and that CF platforms are an effective financial technology (Fintech) tool for financing entrepreneurs in the Middle East. The study shows that the success of CF projects in the Middle East can be anticipated by estimating and breaking down enormous information of web-based and social media movement, human resources of funders and online venture introduction. The authors conclude with recommendations for future EF and CF research.

This study aims to analyze the CF and EF principles in the Middle East region as the CF experience and practice in this part of the world tend to be unexplored in terms of research. Presently a very few numbers published research on CF exists. Moreover, to the best of the knowledge, there is no single study investigating CF as an alternative financing source in the Middle East. In particular, the study.

Prior research treated entrepreneurs’ actions as purely opportunistic and voluntary, excluding social and economic systems’ influence on entrepreneurial actions. However, the applications of communication strategies, project management and social network are anchored in socioeconomic systems in which the entrepreneurs are rooted. To address the gap, this study aims to articulate – through the prism of institutional theory – how restaurant crowdfunding (CF) success is affected by socioeconomic prosperity according to entrepreneurs’ race and geographic area.

The current study analyzed 2,008 restaurant CF projects launched in the USA through the Kickstarter platform from 2010 to 2020. By conducting one-way analysis of variance and multilevel mixed-effect logistic regression models, this study examined the relative socioeconomic prosperity and CF success according to the race of the restaurant entrepreneurs. The study also examined how socioeconomic prosperity affected CF success and how that relationship was moderated by the entrepreneurs’ level of restaurant experience.

This study finds that relative socioeconomic prosperity and CF success does differ according to race. Also in the CF context, lower socioeconomic prosperity does impede fundraising success. While the level of restaurant experience significantly increased an entrepreneur’s CF success, the impact was not so significant as to overcome the impact of socioeconomic prosperity.

Drawing on institutional theory, this study examines the impact of socioeconomic prosperity on CF project outcomes. By uncovering the significant impact of socioeconomic systems on CF success, this study fills the research gap. Previous studies have generally treated minority entrepreneurs as an aggregated form. The authors’ results extend the literature by including major ethnic groups – whites, African Americans and Asians.

The findings of the current study show restaurant entrepreneurs can raise the likelihood of CF success by doing two things: first, accumulate experience in the restaurant industry; second, use their CF websites to highlight testimonials about the value of that experience. Federal, state and local governments can institute policies to help improve racial minorities’ socioeconomic conditions and thereby promote startups’ fundraising success.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to examine unexplored institutional effect on CF outcomes. It examines how and why socioeconomic factors affect minority entrepreneurs’ funding success. It compares the prosperity and CF success of white, African American and Asian entrepreneurs.

Color psychology theory reveals that complex images with very varied palettes and many different colors are likely to be considered unattractive by individuals. Notwithstanding, web content containing social signals may be more attractive via the initiation of a social connection. This research investigates a predictive model blending variables from these theoretical perspectives to determine crowdfunding success.

The research is based on data from 176,614 Kickstarter projects. A number of machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques were employed to analyze the listing images for color complexity and the presence of people, while specific language features, including socialness, were measured in the listing text. Logistic regression was applied, controlling for several additional variables and predictive model was developed.

The findings supported the color complexity and socialness effects on crowdfunding success. The model achieves notable predictive value explaining 56.4% of variance. Listing images containing fewer colors and that have more similar colors are more likely to be crowdfunded successfully. Listings that convey greater socialness have a greater likelihood of being funded.

This investigation contributes a unique understanding of the effect of features of both socialness and color complexity on the success of crowdfunding ventures. A second contribution comes from the process and methods employed in the study, which provides a clear blueprint for the processing of large-scale analysis of soft information (images and text) in order to use them as variables in the scientific testing of theory.

Adopting a brand prominence perspective, this study aims to examine how textual and visual brand elements influence the success of crowdfunding campaigns for aftermarket offerings.

A Python-based Web scraper was used to collect data from 620 crowdfunding campaigns for aftermarket offerings hosted on Kickstarter. The linguistic inquiry and word count application programing interface was then used to analyze the linguistic aspects of these campaigns. A fixed effects regression model was used to evaluate the hypotheses.

Textual and visual brand prominence are positively associated with campaign success. Further, with some variations, both types of brand prominence augment the positive effects of narrative and graphic design elements on campaign success.

This study makes novel theoretical contributions to the literature on branding, crowdfunding and aftermarket products. The results also provide practical insights to aftermarket enterprises on creating compelling crowdfunding campaigns.

By analyzing the direct and synergistic effects of branding, narrative and graphic design elements on crowdfunding success, this study extends various literature streams and identifies several future research opportunities.

Fierce competition in the crowdfunding market has resulted in high failure rates. Owing to their dedication and efforts, many founders have relaunched failed campaigns as a second attempt. Despite the need for a better understanding, the success of campaign relaunches has not been well-researched. To fill this research gap, this study first theorizes how founders’ learning may enhance their competencies and influence investors’ attribution of entrepreneurial failure. The study then empirically documents the extent and conditions under which such learning efforts impact campaign relaunch performance.

This study examines 5,798 Kickstarter-relaunched campaigns. The founders’ learning efforts are empirically captured by key changes in campaign design that deviate from past business practices. Word movers’ distances and perceptual hashing algorithms (pHash) are used separately to measure differences in campaign textual descriptions and pictorial designs.

Differences in textual descriptions and pictorial designs during campaign failure–relaunch are positively associated with campaign relaunch success. The impacts are further amplified when the previous failures are more severe.

This study is one of the first to examine the success of a campaign relaunch after an initial failure. This study contributes to a better understanding of founders’ learning in crowdfunding contexts and provides insights into the strategies founders can adopt to reap performance benefits.

Confidence gives entrepreneurs the belief that they can exercise control and that they have the ability to ensure the success of a focal entrepreneurial endeavor. However, failure can rattle an entrepreneur's confidence causing them to question their belief and ability. This study investigates the link between confidence and entrepreneurial plan upon reentry after crowdfunding failure. Particularly, it examines whether more confident entrepreneurs who failed in their original crowdfunding endeavor persist or change their plan in terms of the positioning of the crowdfunding endeavor and the funding goal in the subsequent attempt.

Using a sample of 2179 serial crowdfunding entrepreneurs who initially experienced failure before launching a subsequent crowdfunding endeavor, this study explores and tests four hypotheses on the relationship between confidence and the change implemented by entrepreneurs in their subsequent crowdfunding endeavors after failure.

The results suggest that more confident entrepreneurs who experienced failure in their initial crowdfunding endeavor persist in their positioning when they attempt a subsequent endeavor. However, no strong relationship was observed between entrepreneurial confidence and persistence with the funding goal of the initial crowdfunding plan in the subsequent crowdfunding endeavor. The study also finds suggestive but inconclusive evidence that the level of negative performance in the failed crowdfunding endeavor moderates the relationship between the entrepreneur's confidence and change in crowdfunding positioning.

This study provides new insights into the effect of entrepreneurial confidence on crowdfunding endeavors after an initial failure. Prior research has focused on its effect in driving the performance of crowdfunding endeavors rather than on how it may affect the plan in terms of the positioning and funding goal enacted by the entrepreneur after experiencing failure.

While crowdfunding provides a novel method for entrepreneurs and startups to raise funding from consumers, a high percentage of crowdfunding projects fail to achieve their funding goals. This study aims to investigate the impact of early backers on crowdfunding success (i.e. reaching funding goals) by considering their social and geographic peer influences.

The author constructed a social network and a geographic network of crowdfunding backers based on a data set from Kickstarter.com and used closeness centrality to quantify the network positions of early backers.

For project categories with low completion uncertainty, early backers who were socially closer to their peers led to a higher chance of success. However, such an impact declines for projects with higher uncertainty. On the other hand, for project categories with high completion uncertainty, early backers who were geographically closer to their peers led to a higher chance of success. Still, such an impact declines for projects with lower uncertainty.

This paper contributes to the literature by investigating the peer influence between socially and geographically related consumers on a crowdfunding platform. The findings provide managerial implications for crowdfunding project creators to target the right crowd.

This study aims to examine the influence of reward personalization on financing outcomes in the Industry 5.0 era, where reward-based crowdfunding meets the personalized needs of individuals.

The study utilizes a corpus of 218,822 crowdfunding projects and 1,276,786 reward options on Kickstarter to investigate the effect of reward personalization on investors’ willingness to participate in crowdfunding. The research draws on expectancy theory and employs quantitative and qualitative approaches to measure reward personalization. Quantitatively, the number of reward options is calculated by frequency; whereas text-mining techniques are implemented qualitatively to extract novelty, which serves as a proxy for innovation.

Findings indicate that reward personalization has an inverted U-shaped effect on investors’ willingness to participate, with investors in life-related projects having a stronger need for reward personalization than those interested in art-related projects. The pledge goal and reward text readability have an inverted U-shaped moderating effect on reward personalization from the perspective of reward expectations and reward instrumentality.

This study refines the application of expectancy theory to online financing, providing theoretical insight and practical guidance for crowdfunding platforms and financiers seeking to promote sustainable development through personalized innovation.