The Impact of Crowdfunding Multimedia Content on Fundraising Performance from the Perspective of Information Overload

Abstract

As an alternative to traditional financing channels, crowdfunding platforms have attracted increasing attention. The decision-making process on crowdfunding platforms includes two stages. In the first stage, investors browse project summary information on the search page and form first impressions; in the second stage, investors browse the campaign homepage to comprehensively evaluate projects and make investment decisions. In both stages, multimedia is widely used to convey information and attract investors. However, due to the problem of information overload, not all multimedia content successfully attracts investors. This paper conducts three studies to address the issue using a large-scale dataset from one of the largest crowdfunding platforms, Indiegogo.com.

In the first stage, investors may encounter hundreds or thousands of projects on the search page and inevitably face information overload. Their average attention is usually very brief, and the click decision may be made in a moment. Among the summary information in the first stage, the cover image plays an important role in forming first impressions and further persuading their investment decisions. However, it remains unclear how cover images influence investors' decisions. Study 1 explores how emotional visual cues (human faces) and informational visual cues (visual text) in the cover image affect investors' decisions and how the effects differ across campaigns. The results demonstrate the great persuasive power of human faces and visual text. We further illustrate the effects of joyful expressions and image-text congruency, as well as the non-significant influence of the length and polarity of visual text. Moreover, emotional visual cues are more effective in intangible product campaigns, while informational visual cues are more effective in tangible product campaigns, and both are important in social service campaigns.

In the second stage, the accumulation of information complexity within each modality and information overlap across modalities may also lead to information overload and hinder investment intentions. However, the influences of information complexity in multimedia environments have not been fully examined in the literature. Study 2 explores how the two dimensions of information complexity, i.e., volume and diversity, affect fundraising performance. Measurements for volume and diversity of text, pictures, and videos are developed. Our results show that the volume and diversity of text and video modalities have inverted-U relationships with fundraising outcomes, thereby revealing the occurrence of information overload.

There is also a lack of theoretical explanation and empirical evidence in the literature on how information overlap across modalities affects crowdfunding performance. In Study 3, we draw on dual-coding theory to distinguish verbal and visual overlap and examine their respective effects on crowdfunding performance. Novel measures of verbal and visual overlap are developed based on the large-scale dataset. Intriguingly, we discover an inverted-U relationship between verbal overlap and fundraising outcomes and a negative relationship between visual overlap and fundraising outcomes. The results are interpreted by the redundancy effect stemming from cognitive load theory and the distinction between verbal and visual systems.

This paper has significant contributions to both theory and practice. We greatly enrich the crowdfunding literature, especially considering the multimedia content and crowdfunding success. We also extend the information overload and multimedia learning literature. Additionally, this paper contributes to persuasion theory, dual-coding theory, and cognitive load theory.

Date of Award	9 May 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Xueyan YIN (Supervisor), Hongwei Wang (External Supervisor) & Xin LI (Co-supervisor)