Purpose

This study aims to investigate how the language used in US Title II equity crowdfunding campaign descriptions relates to campaign success.

Design/methodology/approach

Data on >3,200 equity offerings from 12 Title II platforms was obtained from 2013 to 2016. The aspects of the campaign descriptions that are focused on are tone and two measures of readability: information quantity – the amount of information available to the investor and information quality – the ease of understanding of the passage of text. Tobit regressions with sector-clustered standard errors are used for estimation while controlling for company-specific variables, market sentiment and platform, regional, sector and time effects. Results are robust to alternative estimation approaches.

Findings

Inverse U-shaped relationships exist between information quantity, information quality and tone and Title II equity crowdfunding campaign success. Overall, less is more as it appears that an intermediate level of information – quantity, quality and tone – is optimal in terms of being a factor that contributes to equity crowdfunding campaign success.

Originality/value

Extends the use of textual analysis to the equity crowdfunding environment in the USA where such analysis is lacking and provides empirical evidence that the language used (e.g. sentiment) in US Title II equity-based crowdfunding campaign descriptions does influence campaign success. It provides empirical evidence of and extends the concept of information overload to the entrepreneurial finance sub-field and indicates tone may be an additional information attribute to consider in this context as contributing to overload.

中文翻译：

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股权众筹：使用情绪分析的美国 Title II 产品

目的

本研究旨在调查美国 Title II 股权众筹活动描述中使用的语言如何与活动成功相关。

设计/方法/方法

从 2013 年到 2016 年，从 12 个 Title II 平台获得了超过 3,200 次股票发行的数据。 活动描述的重点是语气和两个可读性衡量标准：信息量——投资者可获得的信息量和信息质量– 易于理解文本的段落。具有部门聚类标准误差的 Tobit 回归用于估计，同时控制公司特定变量、市场情绪和平台、区域、部门和时间效应。结果对于替代估计方法是稳健的。

发现

信息数量、信息质量和语气与 Title II 股权众筹活动的成功之间存在倒 U 形关系。总体而言，少即是多，因为似乎中等水平的信息（数量、质量和语气）是促成股权众筹活动成功的最佳因素。

原创性/价值

将文本分析的使用扩展到美国缺乏此类分析的股权众筹环境，并提供经验证据表明美国第二章基于股权的众筹活动描述中使用的语言（例如情绪）确实会影响活动的成功。它提供了经验证据并将信息超载的概念扩展到创业金融子领域，并表明语气可能是在这种情况下考虑的附加信息属性，因为它有助于超载。