Signaling innovativeness in crowdfunding entrepreneurial narratives: the moderating roles of entrepreneurial passion and social endorsement

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of the innovativeness-related language of crowdfunding pitches on funding outcomes under different boundary conditions specified by two context-relevant signals, entrepreneurial passion and social endorsement. Design/methodology/approach This study develops six hypotheses about the focal impacts of innovativeness-related language (i.e. incremental and radical) and the moderating effects of entrepreneurial passion and social endorsement. The hypotheses are tested with a sample of 1,057 real projects collected from a typical platform with a computer-aided content analysis method. Findings This study finds that pitches containing more incremental innovativeness language can generate more funds and that those containing more radical innovativeness language can lead to less favorable funding outcomes. While incremental innovativeness language interacts with entrepreneurial passion language to positively affect funding outcomes, radical innovativeness language requires social endorsement to diminish its negative effect on funding outcomes. Research limitations/implications This study demonstrates that the content of messages of entrepreneurial narratives does indeed drive funding success in the context of reward-based crowdfunding and confirms the relevance of the consumer perspective of reward-based crowdfunding by using a real dataset. Originality/value This work joins a number of entrepreneurial narrative studies investigating the impacts of the innovativeness-related language of pitches (issue-relevant content) and their interactions with informational signals (i.e. entrepreneurial passion and social endorsement) on funding outcomes in the context of reward-based crowdfunding.