The Impact of Social Threat Framing on Crowdfunding Performance: The Moderating Roles of Family Involvement and Linguistic Style

There has been increased use of social causes in crowdfunding proposals. Building on prior literature on issue framing in crowdfunding, we argue that framing of social threats, which integrates social framing and negative framing, can be particularly useful in attracting funding by creating a strong sense of urgency among investors. We find support for such a positive effect of social threat framing based on a sample of 217 U.S. equity crowdfunding firms from 2015 to 2021. Meanwhile, we find that social threat framing is more effective for family firms than nonfamily firms in improving crowdfunding performance, whereas local orientation presented in funding proposals does not show a significant effect. We also find that two styles of language - emotional expression and analytical thinking - present opposite moderation effects; the former strengthens the relationship, while the latter weakens it. The implications of the findings on crowdfunding success and effective communication are discussed.