How signal intensity of behavioral orientations affects crowdfunding performance: The role of entrepreneurial orientation in crowdfunding business ventures

Backers assess a crowdfunding campaign description not merely for a project’s capacity to deliver a reward, but also for the manner in which that reward is delivered. Viewed through the lens of signalling theory, crowdfunding performance depends on the signals of behavioural orientations. While earlier research has explored the positive and negative effects of signals of behavioural orientation, signal intensity merits exploration. We explored signal intensity among 48,628 reward-based crowdfunding campaigns and focused on entrepreneurial orientation to categorize signals of behavioural orientations. We show that signals of autonomy, innovativeness, competitive aggressiveness, and risk-taking have an inverted-U-shaped relationship with crowdfunding performance. Signals of proactiveness have a positive non-monotonic relationship with crowdfunding performance.