How do reward personalization options influence the public’s willingness to participate in innovation projects? Insights from crowdfunding in Industry 5.0

Purpose This study aims to examine the influence of reward personalization on financing outcomes in the Industry 5.0 era, where reward-based crowdfunding meets the personalized needs of individuals. Design/methodology/approach The study utilizes a corpus of 218,822 crowdfunding projects and 1,276,786 reward options on Kickstarter to investigate the effect of reward personalization on investors’ willingness to participate in crowdfunding. The research draws on expectancy theory and employs quantitative and qualitative approaches to measure reward personalization. Quantitatively, the number of reward options is calculated by frequency; whereas text-mining techniques are implemented qualitatively to extract novelty, which serves as a proxy for innovation. Findings Findings indicate that reward personalization has an inverted U-shaped effect on investors’ willingness to participate, with investors in life-related projects having a stronger need for reward personalization than those interested in art-related projects. The pledge goal and reward text readability have an inverted U-shaped moderating effect on reward personalization from the perspective of reward expectations and reward instrumentality. Originality/value This study refines the application of expectancy theory to online financing, providing theoretical insight and practical guidance for crowdfunding platforms and financiers seeking to promote sustainable development through personalized innovation.