The Mind Behind Crowdfunding: An Empirical Study of Speech Emotion in Fundraising Success

In online crowdfunding, individuals gather information from two primary sources, video pitches and text narratives. However, while the attributes of the attached video may have substantial effects on fundraising, previous literature has largely neglected effects of the video information. Therefore, this study focuses on speech information embedded in videos. Employing the machine learning techniques including speech recognition and linguistic style classifications, we examine the role of speech emotion and speech style in crowdfunding success, compared to that of text narratives. Using Kickstarter dataset in 2016, our preliminary results suggest that speech information –the linguistic styles– is significantly associated with the crowdfunding success, even after controlling for text and other project-specific information. More interestingly, linguistic styles of the speech have a more profound explanatory power than text narratives do. This study contributes to the growing body of crowdfunding research by providing the unexplored aspect of retrieving speech information from the video.