Presence: Extending the emotions as a social information (EASI) perspective into crowdfunding

Entrepreneurial emotions and crowdfunding have been popular topics in recent years. This study examines the role of two emotional displays – presence and authenticity – in raising financial capital through crowdfunding. Drawing on the Emotions as Social Information (EASI) theory, we develop a mediation model and propose that entrepreneurs’ authenticity serves as an inferential process through which presence influences crowdfunding success. We test our model with crowdfunding projects from Kickstarter. Consistent with the proposed model, empirical result shows that authenticity positively mediates the relationship between entrepreneurs’ presence and crowdfunding success. We advance scholarly knowledge concerning the influence of emotional displays on potential funders’ decisions. Thus, these findings contribute to entrepreneurial emotion and resource acquisition literature.