Researching On The Influencing Mechanisms Of Emotional Factors In Donation-Based Crowdfunding Pitches On Crowdfunding Performance

As a new type of fundraising method,donation-based crowdfunding has effectively alleviated the difficulty and high cost of raising funds for individuals or charitable organizations,and has become one of the most commonly used methods for charitable fundraising.However,since donation-based crowdfunding is still in the early stages of development,there are many problems in the crowdfunding market,resulting in more than half of donation-based crowdfunding projects failing to reach their goals within the scheduled deadline.In order to improve the performance of crowdfunding and ensure that people who encounter difficulties in life get more help,some scholars have conducted a series of researches on the donor behavior of backers and the factors that affect the crowdfunding performance.In donation-based crowdfunding,emotional expression in crowdfunding pitches is considered a key factor that influences potential backers’ donations.It can effectively evoke backers’ prosocial behavior by evoking empathetic,sympathetic responses from them.Although extant studies have respectively pointed out that textual emotions or facial emotions in pitches can have a significant impact on crowdfunding performance,the specific mechanisms of their influence on crowdfunding performance have not been fully explored.At the same time,most existing studies have examined emotions by focusing on a single channel,failing to consider the integrated role of textual and facial emotions in donation-based crowdfunding.As a result,this paper focuses on the influence of textual emotions and facial emotions on crowdfunding performance,and proposes the following research questions:(1)Do textual emotions and facial emotions in crowdfunding pitches simultaneously affect crowdfunding performance?(2)How do textual and facial emotions affect crowdfunding performance?(3)What are the similarities and differences in the roles of textual emotions and facial emotions?To answer the above questions,this paper initially proposes a research model based on emotional contagion theory and language-moderated association theory to describe the relationship between textual and facial emotions and crowdfunding performance.Subsequently,this study puts forward some research hypotheses based on this model,laying an analytical framework and foundation for subsequent empirical research.Additionally,this study collected real project data from one of the largest donation-based crowdfunding platforms in China–Tencent Gongyi.By utilizing big data techniques,this study extracted textual emotions and facial emotions from crowdfunding pitches and quantified them.Finally,this study employed regression models from econometrics to empirically examine the effects of emotion-related variables on crowdfunding performance.The main findings of this paper are as follows:(1)Both textual and facial emotions play important roles in affecting crowdfunding performance(i.e.,number of funds raised,funding ratio,and number of backers).Further more,facial emotions function as a complement to textual emotions by illustrating more effects in attracting backers than promoting funds raised.(2)The overall negative-emotion-oriented narratives are more likely to generate favorable funding outcomes.However,the effects of specific textual and facial emotions on funding outcomes are complex and varied: some emotions(e.g.,textual sadness,facial happiness and facial anger)have positive effects,some(e.g.,textual anger and facial fear)pose negative effects,and others(e.g.,textual fear,and textual disgust)have no significant effects.(3)Textual emotions and facial emotions influence backers’ decisions through different channels.When backers perceive the same emotions through different emotional cognitive mechanisms,their decisions may be influenced differently.This research outlines a framework to offer a more detailed and comprehensive understanding of emotions in donation-based crowdfunding.It also contributes to existing research by revealing the vital and complex role of emotions in the persuasive process of prosocial behaviors and by uncovering the different emotional cognitive mechanisms underlying the impacts of textual and facial emotions.Our research also provides practical guidance for project initiators and platform practitioners.