Go Pro Bono: Prosocial Language as a Success Factor in Crowdfunding

Pietraszkiewicz, Agnieszka; Soppe, Birthe; Formanowicz, Magdalena Maria (2017). Go Pro Bono: Prosocial Language as a Success Factor in Crowdfunding. Social Psychology, 48(5), pp. 265-278. Hogrefe & Huber 10.1027/1864-9335/a000319

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Crowdfunding enables fundraising of various ventures by collecting money from several donors. We argue that the inclusion of prosocial language contributes to success in this new domain of resource acquisition. In Study 1, we analyzed 164,056 projects from the online crowdfunding platform Kickstarter and found that the higher the percentage of prosocial words employed in a project’s description, the larger the number of investors and the greater the chances of reaching a funding goal. In Study 2 (N = 234), an experimental study, we documented that the use of prosocial words increases the support people thought they would give to a project. Our results indicate that people want to invest their financial resources in ventures that contribute to prosocial goals.

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