Video Signaling in Nonprofit Crowdfunding Campaigns

• In Event: Fundraising Practices and the Influences on Giving

Abstract

The increasing use of Web 2.0 and rapid growth of technological innovations has opened up the online realm for revenue generation such as crowdfunding. Crowdfunding entails fund raising activities by entrepreneurial individuals or groups (non-profit as well as for-profit) for their ventures, aiming at a large group of people, who usually contribute small amounts of money, using specific internet-based platforms without standard financial intermediaries (Mollick, 2014). Since the value of cumulative transactions via crowdfunding rises – the World Bank estimates up to $300 billion by 2025 (Meyskens & Bird, 2015) – this online fundraising tool can be a promising new source to generate revenues for NPOs.
Although crowdfunding has inspired a rich body of literature for the last ten years, the scientific debate is at its beginning (Short et al., 2017). For example, there is a need for studies analyzing how different linguistic and narration styles in the campaign affect audiences and the crowdfunding process (e.g. Parhankangas & Renko, 2017). Also there are calls for more studies on effects of visual emotions on consumer behavior in the crowdfunding context (Wang et al., 2016) and how personality traits of fundraisers via video affect the campaign performance (Bernardino & Santos, 2016).
In order to respond to these calls, we intend to answer the following research question in line with signaling theory (Spence, 1973) and the theory of impression management (Goffman, 1959): How do the language and narratives used as well as personality traits displayed in a video pitch affect the success of crowdfunding campaigns?
First, we will use real-time data from crowdfunding platforms to test effects of factors related to the video pitch and other control variables, identified in previous research as critical campaign factors, on crowdfunding campaign success. To assess the personality traits of the fundraiser performing in the video pitch, we plan to apply the videometric approach, a novel research method for video analysis (Petrenko et al., 2016). It entails a scale development for video data and perceived personality traits. Second, we plan to conduct an online experiment to validate results from study 1 as suggested by Polzin et al. (2017). A student sample might be suitable, since crowdfunding backers are typically young and have little funding experience (Davis et al., 2017). Results will contribute to the recent scientific crowdfunding debate on signaling and enable managerial implications for campaign management, especially in creating video pitches for successful crowdfunding campaigns.

Authors

• Maren Rottler, University of Mannheim

• Bernd Helmig, University of Mannheim