Abstract
The first-stage decision is critical in the decision process in crowdfunding, where the cover image plays an important role in forming first impressions and persuading click funders. This study explores how emotional visual cues (human face) and informational visual cues (visual text) in the cover image affect funders’ decisions and how the effects differ across campaigns. The results demonstrate the great persuasive power of human faces and visual text. We further illustrate the effects of joyful expressions and image-text congruency as well as the non-significant influence of the length and polarity of visual text. Moreover, emotional visual cues are more effective in intangible product campaigns, while informational visual cues are more effective in tangible product campaigns, and both are important in social service campaigns. Valuable insight is provided to creators about the design of the cover image.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 113975 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-13 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Decision Support Systems |
| Volume | 171 |
| Early online date | 7 Apr 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published (in print/issue) - 31 Aug 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China [ 71771177 , 72072062 ], Shanghai Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning Project [A2023010], and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [ 2022-1-YB-29 ].
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Elsevier B.V.
Keywords
- crowdfunding
- cover image
- persuasive appeal
- first impression
- campaign output
- Campaign output
- Cover image
- Crowdfunding
- Persuasive appeal
- First impression
