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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.

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.

In the context of rewards-based crowdfunding, this study aims to examine the role of project backers as providers of knowledge inputs beyond just financial capital.

This study uses binomial regression to study the relationship between project creators’ and backers’ knowledge sharing, and the relationship of these two knowledge-sharing elements with achieving above-goal funding levels.

This study finds that the project creator’s knowledge sharing is significantly and positively related to backers’ knowledge sharing and that this relationship is moderated by the type of project. Furthermore, backers’ knowledge sharing is positively related to above-goal funding outcomes for a project.

This study established the link between creators’ and backers’ knowledge sharing in rewards-based crowdfunding, which has been underexplored in the literature. This study’s direct attention to the role of knowledge as a key resource in rewards-based crowdfunding and crowdsourcing in general.

For entrepreneurs seeking crowdfunding, this study highlights the importance of knowledge sharing with their project backers to attain above-goal funding. Furthermore, eliciting backers’ knowledge input acts as a signaling mechanism that increases the crowd’s confidence in the project. It also endows entrepreneurs with knowledge resources that can improve project outcomes and achieve broader market success postcrowdfunding.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to focus on knowledge content as a critical element in project backer-creator communication in rewards-based crowdfunding. This study also delineate the various knowledge types shared between the project creator and backers in both rewards-based crowdfunding projects.

Crowdfunding is an increasingly popular channel for project fundraising for entrepreneurial ventures. Such efforts require fundraisers to develop and manage a crowdfunding campaign over a period of time and several stages. Thus, the authors aim to identify the stages fundraisers go through in their crowdfunding campaign process and how their engagement evolves throughout this process.

Following a multiple case study research design analysing six successful campaigns, the current study suggests a taxonomy of stages the fundraisers go through in their crowdfunding campaign management process while identifying the types of engagement displayed and their relative intensity at each of these stages.

The study proposes a five-stage process framework (pre-launch, launch, mid-campaign, conclusion and post-campaign), accompanied by a series of propositions outlining the relative intensity of different types of engagement throughout this process. The authors show that engagement levels appear with high intensity at pre-launch, and to a lesser degree also at the post-launch stage while showing low intensity at the stages in between them. More specifically, cognitive and behavioural engagement are most prominent at the pre- and post-launch stages. Emotional engagement is highest during the launch, mid-launch and conclusion stages. And social engagement maintains moderate levels of intensity throughout the process.

This study focuses on the campaign process using engagement theory, thus identifying the differing engagement patterns throughout the dynamic crowdfunding campaign management process, not just in one part.

Social interaction in comment sections has become a key factor for backers' decision making in crowdfunding platforms. However, current research on the two-way social interaction in crowdfunding is insufficient, and there exist inconsistent conclusions. This study focuses on the social interaction between creators and backers and explores its influence on the successful exit of crowdfunding projects.

The extended Cox model is used for the empirical analysis of 1,988 crowdfunding projects on the Modian (www.modian.com) platform, a crowdfunding platform for cultural and creative projects in China. The two-way social interaction is reflected in comment quantity and sentiment, as well as reply rate.

Results reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between comment quantity/sentiment and the successful exit of crowdfunding projects. This relationship is strengthened by high reply rate.

This study focuses on comment quantity and sentiment. The inverted U-shaped results reconcile previous conclusions. Replies from creators are regarded as a separate factor, and their moderating role is explained. The study research proves the importance of social interaction in crowdfunding platforms and provides suggestions for backers, creators and platform managers.

This paper investigates how two characteristics of language, abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity, influence user engagement in communication exercises on innovation targeted to the general audience. The proposed conceptual model suggests that innovation fits well with more abstract language because of the association of innovation with imagination and distal construal. Moreover, communication of innovation may benefit from greater adherence to the narrativity arc, that is, early staging, increasing plot progression and climax optimal point. These effects are moderated by content variety and emotional tone, respectively.

Based on a Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) application on a sample of 3225 TED Talks transcripts, the authors identify 287 TED Talks on innovation, and then applied econometric analyses to test the hypotheses on the effects of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity on engagement, and on the moderation effects of content variety and emotional tone.

The authors found that abstractness (vs concreteness) and narrativity have positive effects on engagement. These two effects are stronger with higher content variety and more positive emotional tone, respectively.

This paper extends the literature on communication of innovation, linguistics and text analysis by evaluating the roles of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity in shaping appreciation of innovation.

This paper reports conceptual and empirical analyses on innovation dissemination through a popular medium – TED Talks – and applies modern text analysis algorithms to test hypotheses on the effects of two pivotal dimensions of language on user engagement.

Information opacity in donation crowdfunding activities has constrained the healthy development of China’s public welfare activities. Addressing the trust crisis and enhancing public engagement warrants further investigation. This study aims to uncover the moderating effect of activity transparency by utilizing data from 1,029 donation crowdfunding projects on the Sina Weibo Public Welfare Social Platform. In this way, we seek to elucidate the impact of donation crowdfunding events on fundraising ability.

This study selects text complexity, number of supporters, creator experience, and social capital as explanatory variables; innovatively selects the number of updates of online crowdfunding activities and total reading volume as moderating variables; selects the number of shares of crowdfunding activities as a mediating variable; and constructs a moderated mediation multiple regression model for fundraising ability.

Our findings indicate that independent variables, such as text complexity, number of supporters, and social capital, can significantly affect the dependent variable, fundraising ability. However, creator experience does not influence fundraising ability. Furthermore, social interaction has a mediating effect, whereas activity transparency has a reverse moderating effect. These results indicate that social interaction can enhance the fundraising ability of donation crowdfunding events. However, with an increase in information transparency, the fundraising ability of social media decreases.

The originality of this research is in clarifying the internal factors affecting fundraising ability through induction, making bold assumptions, and focusing on how social media’s effective interaction and activity transparency will affect public welfare crowdfunding fundraising ability.

This article aims to investigate the status of and the trends in the intertwining of crowdfunding and innovation literature by identifying, evaluating and synthesizing the findings from previous research. This paper provides a bibliometric meta-analysis of the already substantial and growing literature on innovation and crowdfunding research.

Using a bibliometric approach, this research scrutinizes all articles that include terms related to “crowdfunding” and “innovation” (in their title, abstract or keywords) in Elsevier’s Scopus database. VosViewer and Bibliometrix package in R have been used to analyse 150 articles.

The results suggest that there are three main research clusters in the innovation and crowdfunding literature. The first cluster highlights the role of crowdfunding in fostering radical and incremental innovation. The second cluster focuses on the concept of openness and its effect on innovation in crowdfunding campaigns, while the third cluster explains the role of platforms’ innovation in crowdfunding success.

Taking a holistic perspective, this contribution advances new knowledge on the intertwining of crowdfunding and innovation research fields. It implies that crowdfunding is facilitating the flow of knowledge between different stakeholders, including project initiators and crowd investors, among others, as they all benefit from open innovation platforms.

This is the application of the Entropy and TOPSIS model to assess the eco-efficiency of European financial institutions using environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategies. The aim is to categorize financial institutions based on key factors such as environmental training and management and to examine the alignment between ideal ESG performance and eco-efficiency.

The study uses environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategies to identify and categorize eco-entrepreneurs in European financial institutions. The study utilizes data to examine the structure between environmental training, effective management practices, and the green performance of financial institutions.

The study shows that European financial institutions exhibit varying degrees of eco-efficiency as assessed using the Entropy and TOPSIS model applied to ESG strategies. Surprisingly, the study found that institutions with a high ESG performance do not always match those with the highest eco-efficiency.

They emphasize the need for financial institutions to align their operations with sustainable practices. This research provides insights to increase eco-efficiency and improve the ESG performance of financial institutions. It also informs policy and decision-making in these institutions in relation to environmental training and management practices, contributing to the wider dialogue on sustainable finance.

This indicates a discrepancy between ESG ratings and actual eco-efficiency, emphasizing the need to reassess the ESG framework. The study findings are crucial for aligning financial institutions with sustainable practices and improving the effectiveness of the ESG framework, especially for institutions at the lower end of the eco-efficiency spectrum.

Although social media has gained prominence as a communication and marketing tool in various sectors, its adoption and utilization within the construction industry remain relatively underexplored. Therefore, this study fills this gap by evaluating the level of awareness and the extent of adoption of social media within the Nigerian construction industry, shedding light on its current status and potential impact.

This objective was attained via a quantitative research approach that utilized a structured questionnaire to obtain responses from construction professionals such as architects, builders, engineers, quantity surveyors and estate managers. Frequencies and percentages and the mean item score (MIS) were used to analyze the questionnaire responses and assess the overall awareness and adoption of social media among construction professionals. Additionally, the Kruskal–Wallis H-test provided valuable insights into the variations in social media adoption levels among different professional categories within the construction industry.

The results indicate that construction professionals possess a generally high level of awareness regarding various social media platforms. However, despite this awareness, the extent of adoption does not align with the level of awareness, suggesting that adoption rates are not as widespread as anticipated.

The findings of this study underscore the importance of not just awareness but also effective adoption and utilization of social media platforms. While awareness is a crucial first step, construction firms should focus on implementing strategies to encourage greater adoption and integration of these platforms into their daily operations. This can go a long way in bridging the awareness – adoption gap which was revealed in this study.

While the limited existing research on social media in the construction industry has predominantly concentrated on areas such as marketing, addressing the root causes of fatalities, data environment tools and business branding, none have undertaken a thorough evaluation of social media awareness and adoption within the sector. This study fills a critical gap by narrowing its focus to the adoption dynamics and the technology’s potential impact on communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing among construction professionals.