I've got a feeling—how multi-modal emotional expressions affect investment decisions in reward-based crowdfunding

Abstract Investment decisions in reward-based crowdfunding are often shaped by intuitive impressions such as the emotional appeal of the project presentation. Yet, it remains unclear how emotional project presentations should be to optimally influence funding decisions. Building on Dual Coding Theory and Emotions as Social Information (EASI) theory, we conducted regression and fuzzy-set qualitative analyses (fsQCA) to examine the effect of emotional expressions in the texts, pictures, and pitch videos of 16,967 Kickstarter project presentations. The results indicate that the intensity of the conveyed emotional expressions has an inverted u-shaped effect on investment behavior, meaning that high intensities of emotional expressions have a negative impact. Our findings also suggest that only specific combinations of modalities need to be used to effectively convey emotional expressions. For an optimal impact, a moderate approach should be chosen, both in terms of the intensity of emotional expressions and the number of modalities to convey them.