Crafting Persuasive Donation Crowdfunding Appeals: The Influence of Rhetoric and Images

ABSTRACT The study of textual and visual cues in donation crowdfunding has drawn significant attention. However, there is limited understanding of how rhetoric promotes donation crowdfunding performance, especially with images. Further, there are two competing theoretical perspectives on the use of images: the picture superiority effect, which suggests the vital role of images in enhancing campaign persuasiveness, versus the cognitive overload theory, which suggests that too much information can overwhelm donors. Our study addresses these gaps by examining the influence of rhetoric types (image and concept) derived from the Regressive Imagery Dictionary on donation crowdfunding performance, and their interaction with images. Using campaigns from a Southeast Asian donation crowdfunding platform and a hurdle model, our study demonstrates that the drivers of funding likelihood (Stage 1) differ from those that affect the amount raised among funded campaigns (Stage 2). At Stage 1, image‐based rhetoric increases the likelihood of funding, whereas surprisingly, there are no interaction effects between rhetoric types and image count. At Stage 2, the use of increased image‐based rhetoric, accompanied by more images, enhances the amount raised in campaigns. Increasing concept‐based rhetoric, along with more images, inhibits the amount raised. Our findings, thus, elucidate when the amplifying power of images on donation crowdfunding performance surfaces and when it has a dampening effect. Our findings also caution against the assumption that the impact of cues (e.g., concept‐based rhetoric and images) on donation crowdfunding performance is uniform across the donation process.