Do linguistic styles matter in university-based crowdfunding? Replicating and extending findings from rewards- and social-based platforms

Abstract

Understanding how linguistic styles affect the performance of crowdfunding campaigns is a central question in crowdfunding research. While prior research finds that linguistic styles shape the persuasiveness and ultimately the performance of crowdfunding campaigns, current research overlooks a foundational tenet in sociolinguistic theory: linguistic styles become less persuasive when the communicator and audience share an in-group membership. This study addresses this issue by attempting to replicate the findings of four crowdfunding studies on linguistic styles in a novel and understudied crowdfunding setting—university-based crowdfunding—where campaign creators and audiences share a strong in-group membership. Analyzing 613 crowdfunding campaigns from 73 U.S. universities, we replicated all null findings and only 11% of supported hypotheses from four crowdfunding studies on linguistic styles in rewards- and social-based crowdfunding. These findings reveal that linguistic styles have a minimal impact on the performance of university-based crowdfunding campaigns.