Entrepreneurial narratives, digital community discussion, and crowdfunding success

This study examines how entrepreneurial narratives are related to crowdfunding success, both directly and indirectly, through community discussion. It draws on the Expectation Confirmation Model (ECM) to conceptualize community discussion as a potential mediator. Using a dataset of 26,996 Indiegogo campaigns and more than 3000 Reddit posts and comments, we apply structural equation modeling and sentiment analysis. We find that the intensity of entrepreneurial narratives, measured by description length and update frequency, is positively associated with both crowdfunding success and community discussion activity. However, community discussion activity, particularly when driven by promotion posts or emerging late in the campaign, is associated with reduced crowdfunding success. These findings highlight the double-edged nature of digital visibility and extend the ECM to capture cross-platform, socially distributed feedback effects. We derive practical guidance for entrepreneurs to strategically time and tailor their communication to avoid backlash and maximize crowdfunding success.