The influence of emotions, authenticity and sense of community on entrepreneur’s ability to acquire funds via crowdfunding

Wuillaume, Amélie [UCL] Jacquemin, Amélie [UCL] Janssen, Frank [UCL]

This paper develops and tests a set of hypotheses concerning how the tone of entrepreneurial narratives affects funding success. We first test our propositions on a sample of projects seeking resources on a donation and reward-based crowdfunding platform (Ulule). Our results suggest that money providers on such a platform prefer narratives characterized by a relatively high emotional language. Results also indicate that the community feeling displayed has a particularly high influence. Its influence dominates the influence of the emotional tone while both aspects are present in the entrepreneurial narrative. We further take an interest in the influence of the same variables on a lending- and equity-based platforms (MyMicroInvest). Our results indicate the cognitive tone (rather than the emotional one) predicts funding success. However, the creation of a sense community stays an indicator of success. Collectively, our results are coherent with our hypotheses that backers on donation and reward-based platforms are motivated by the emotional dimension while funders on lending- and equity-based platform are guided by cognitive considerations to a greater extent. We contribute to the entrepreneurial resource acquisition literature by recognizing the emotional dimension of money providers’ decision making, by considering the crowdfunder as a resources’ provider to be distinguished from the traditional investor and by showing how it may affect an entrepreneur's ability in resources acquisition.