Understanding crowdfunding using artificial intelligence and textual content

Details

Supervisors

Thewissen, James

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

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

Abstract

enThis study aims to better understand the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on crowdfunding campaign performance using a database of 85,752 Kickstarter campaigns across 123 countries. This paper tests if AI use affects campaign outcomes directly. It also tries to find out if AI impacts the textual characteristics of campaign descriptions and if those textual characteristics influence the probability of success and the total amount raised of the funding campaign. Results show that higher AI use is significantly and negatively associated with both campaign success and amount raised. This study also finds, among other findings, that content generated by AI reduces readability by increasing lexical complexity and produces a more positive tone. The tested changes in textual characteristics themselves have a significant impact on campaign performance. Together, the findings suggest that using AI as an autonomous writer in crowdfunding descriptions has a bad impact on campaign performance. This effect operates through the ways AI changes the writing style of campaign descriptions.