Analysis of the impact of lexical complexity on the outcome of crowdfunding campaigns

Details

Supervisors

Thewissen, James

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de gestion, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

The existing literature on crowdfunding identifies funding success factors by focusing mainly on campaign-specific characteristics, such as the funding goal set, the duration of the project or the presence of a visual component. However, the content of project descriptions has been largely ig nored. In this research, we investigate the impact of lexical complexity on funding success. Using a dataset collected on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, we find that this linguistic feature is significantly associated with the success of the campaign. We further examine this influence and find that lexical complexity can both encourage and discourage potential backers to contribute. Overall, this research indicates that project descriptions have significant predictive power on the outcome of a crowdfunding campaign and that its analysis can help project owners and backers to assess the likelihood of funding.