Uncovering Innovation Impact on E‐Waste Management Projects: Analyzing Consumer Behavior in Crowdfunding to Shape Future Business Strategy

ABSTRACT Over the years, consumers have assumed a crucial role in the overall e‐waste management landscape, and a growing number of researchers have begun to investigate their behaviors/preferences. Despite the debate in the literature on e‐waste management, the role of innovation impact in influencing consumer behavior remains unexplored. The context of crowdfunding is an ideal setting for exploring consumer behaviors because backers act as innovators and early adopters of products/services. Drawing on Signaling Theory, this study investigates whether the disclosure of project innovativeness influences backer decision‐making in e‐waste crowdfunding campaigns and whether backers prefer incremental or radical innovations. We used data from the Kickstarter platform and performed OLS regressions. Results show that campaigns disclosing innovation attract significantly more funds and backers than non‐innovative ones, confirming that innovativeness functions as a credible signal that reduces information asymmetry and induces financial commitment. Furthermore, backers systematically prefer incrementally innovative campaigns over radically innovative ones, suggesting that incremental innovations generate stronger and more verifiable signals. These findings extend and theoretically refine the contribution of the literature on incremental and radical innovation to a new and socially relevant product category.