Implicit Personality and Big Five Traits in Equity Crowdfunding

Abstract

Implicit personality representations play a crucial role in shaping how investors perceive entrepreneurs and subsequently invest in their projects. We investigate the relationship between perceived Big Five personality signals and funding success utilizing a sample of 709 US-based equity crowdfunding campaigns. We find that higher conscientiousness, lower neuroticism, extraversion, and openness serve as funding success signals, significantly affecting both the funding level and number of investors attracted. This study extends the literature on the relationship between perceived personality signals and entrepreneurial finance by demonstrating the context-dependence of personality signals. The results fuel arguments that equity crowdfunding gears towards classical venture financing and is less comparable to reward-based crowdfunding