AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECTS OF MESSAGE FRAMING ON CROWDFUNDING FUNDING LEVEL

摘要

This study investigates two new informational cues (i.e., positive and negative framing), which are typically hidden in project descriptions of crowdfunding projects, and examines two research questions 1) How do positive and negative framing affect funding level? 2) Do public updates moderate the effects of these framings on funding level? We test these research questions using data from 644 technological gadget projects posted on a popular crowdfunding website over two years. We further investigate our hypotheses using three laboratory studies where we replicate the above effects on backing intention of backers. Results suggest that positive framing does not have a direct effect on funding level, but on the other hand, negative framing does have a positive effect on funding level. Moreover, results indicate that public update positively affects funding level and increases the positive effect of negative framing on funding level. Results also show that the combination of positive framing and public update has a negative impact on funding level. However, according to our experiments, a negatively framed update decreases the negative effect of a positively framed campaign on backing intention.