1 s2.0 S1042443122000774 Main

J. Int. Financ. Markets Inst.
Money 80 (2022) 101595
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of International Financial Markets,

Institutions & Money
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/intfin
Religious and social narratives and crowdfunding success

Ali Rama a, b, *, Chunxia Jiang b, Sofia Johan b, c, Hong Liu d, Yong Mai e
a
Faculty of Economics and Business, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University Jakarta, Indonesia
b
Business School, University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom
c
Florida Atlantic University, United States
d
School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, United Kingdom
e
School of Business, East China University of Science and Technology, China
A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T
JEL classification: In this study, we explore how the religiosity and social orientation affects crowdfunding success
D81 through the lens of the moral foundation theory. Using a sample of 17,000 crowdfunding cam
D91 paigns from 91 countries hosted on the LaunchGood platform over the period 2013–2020, we find
G41
that narratives expressing religious identity and social orientation increase individual contribu
Z12
tion, attract more crowdfunders, and increase the probability of achieving fundraising goals. We
Z13
also find that this positive effect is conditional to societal cultural characteristics – stronger in
Keywords:
individualistic, masculine, long-term oriented, and indulgent societies, but weaker in high power-
Crowdfunding
Religiosity distance and uncertainty avoiding societies. Our findings provide new evidence for the impor
Linguistic narrative tance of religiosity in influencing crowdfunding behavior.
Moral foundation
1. Introduction
Research on crowdfunding thus far has focused much more on the entrepreneurs and their start-ups, but much less on the investing
crowd (Schwienbacher, 2019), largely due to the difficulty in obtaining information on the crowd. Research on the driving factors of
crowdfunding success serves as a bridge to understanding crowdfunders’ motivation for engaging in and financially backing
crowdfunding campaigns (Macht & Weatherston, 2015). Crowdfunders’ motivations are driven by different antecedents, depending on
the crowdfunding models, i.e., non-investment or investment crowdfunding (Ahlers et al., 2015; Belleflamme et al., 2014; Johan &
Zhang, 2020). The motivating factors in non-investment crowdfunding include the collection of rewards, helping others, supporting
value causes, and being a part of the community (Burtch et al., 2013), while that in investment crowdfunding include supporting
entrepreneurs, prospective financial returns, lobbying for campaigns to serve and enhance their own images, and establishing direct
contact with related ventures (Johan & Zhang, 2020).
Similar to traditional investment contexts, such as initial public offerings of securities, crowdfunders in investment crowdfunding
typically conduct due diligence and systematically assess information before investing (Ahlers et al., 2015; Cumming & Johan, 2019;
Johan & Zhang, 2020, 2021; Cumming et al., 2021). However, in non-investment crowdfunding, i.e., donation-based crowdfunding,
crowdfunders are less likely to carry out due diligence because they are typically equipped with little formal investment experience
(Allison et al., 2015) or simply because they are more concerned with fulfilling altruistic purposes or rather the projects’ ideological
* Corresponding author at: Faculty of Economics and Business, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University Jakarta, Indonesia.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (A. Rama), [email protected] (C. Jiang), [email protected] (Y. Mai).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intfin.2022.101595
Received 11 April 2022; Accepted 1 June 2022
Available online 6 June 2022
1042-4431/© 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
A. Rama et al. Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions & Money 80 (2022) 101595
goals over the detailed business plans and financial information. Crowdfunders are faced with information asymmetries, have
insufficient access to the entrepreneurs, and often are not sophisticated enough to evaluate available information (Lehner & Nicholls,
2014; Schwienbacher & Larralde, 2012; Cumming et al., 2021). As such, their decisions are largely based on information observed
from other crowdfunders’ behavior and third-party endorsement (Hornuf & Schwienbacher, 2018; Nguyen et al., 2019; Vismara,
2018), visible signals in campaign pitch, such as videos and narratives (Macht & Weatherston, 2015), and perception-based value
indicators, such as the impression of product creativity or entrepreneurs’ passion (Davis et al., 2017; Johan & Zhang, 2021).
To mitigate information asymmetries, entrepreneurs have found pitch narratives to be powerful tools to convey quality, credibility,
preparedness, professionalism, and legitimacy (Johan & Zhang, 2020; Mollick, 2014; Zheng et al., 2014). While technical aspects (such
as project presentation, campaign duration, and funding target) are important factors determining crowdfunders’ funding decisions (Bi
et al., 2017; Block et al., 2018; Mollick, 2014), researchers have started to assess the role of entrepreneurial narratives in influencing
crowdfunders’ decision. Prior research has shown the importance of narratives and language in promoting online resource mobili
zation in terms of narcissistic rhetoric (Anglin et al., 2018), linguistic styles (Parhankangas & Renko, 2017; Johan & Zhang, 2020),
moral cues (Jancenelle et al. (2018a), Jancenelle & Javalgi, 2018), economic and normative languages (Jancenelle et al., 2018),
positive languages (Anglin et al., 2018), and prosocial languages (Defazio et al., 2020; Pietraszkiewicz et al., 2017). However, the rich
features of language with proven importance on persuasion in other contexts have not been adequately analyzed in the context of
crowdfunding (Heon et al., 2019; Jancenelle & Javalgi, 2018; Pietraszkiewicz et al., 2017). One example would be psychologically
derived linguistic styles, such as religious and social languages. We thus motivate our research from a burgeoning strand of research
that has shown the significance of religiosity on venture capital investment decision making (Chircop et al., 2020) and subsequent
crowdfunding project success (Di Pietro & Masciarelli, 2021). Our research stems from our interest in understanding crowdfunders’
decision making.
We believe that specific features of linguistic styles, in particular, religiosity identity and social values, are vital elements of
narrative pitches in crowdfunding campaigns. We address this issue from the supply side (the crowdfunder) through the lens of moral
foundation theory. Different from Di Pietro & Masciarelli (2021) that look at religiosity from a regional perspective, we focus on the
direct connection between religiosity and crowdfunding. Using a sample of 17,000 campaigns from 91 countries hosted on a religious-
based crowdfunding platform – the LaunchGood1 platform over the period 2013–2020, we find that narratives expressing religious
identity and social orientation increase individual funding contribution, the number of crowdfunders, and the probability of achieving
fundraising goals. We also find that this positive effect is conditional to societal cultural characteristics – stronger in individualistic,
masculine, long-term oriented, and indulgent societies, but weaker in high power-distance and uncertainty avoiding societies.
Our study contributes to the extant research in the following ways. First, our study makes an empirical contribution to the scholarly
conversation about entrepreneurial narratives and resource mobilization, especially from the perspective of social entrepreneurship
focusing on social causes. The narrative is told in a particular context to particular listeners for particular purposes (Gartner, 2007).
Our study offers a conceptual framework for analyzing the linguistic features of entrepreneurial narratives in terms of religious identity
and social orientation, which help mobilize financial resources to support entrepreneurial endeavors. Second, our study enriches the
literature on the moral foundation theory as applied to resource mobilization. While universal moral foundations matter to all, narrow
moral foundations matter primarily to conservative individuals (i.e., ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity) (Haidt &
Graham, 2007). Social cues are likely to appeal to investors in general, while religious cues are likely to appeal to religious-concerned
retail investors. We develop moral cues and broaden the construct of moral dimensions by mapping religious cues and social cues into
the narrow and universal moral foundations, respectively. Third, our study adds to the rapidly growing body of research on entre
preneurial finance and crowdfunding by gaining insights from the religiosity perspective of the crowdfunders. The idea that religion is
linked to business activities is hardly novel (Audretsch et al., 2013; Chircop et al., 2020; Parboteeah et al., 2015). Religiosity is a major
source of morality and ethical behavior (Parboteeah et al., 2008) and it has been linked to risk-taking (Chircop et al., 2020), firm
performance (El Ghoul et al., 2012), economic development (Barro & McCleary, 2003), and corporate social responsibility (Williams &
Zinkin, 2010). Unlike prior research that look at regional religiosity from an overly broad perspective, we analyze how apparent
religious sentiments and social orientations embedded in project campaigns affect crowdfunders’ funding decision. Finally, our study
also extends the literature on the influence of the informal institutional environment (e.g., culture) on entrepreneurial finance and
crowdfunding (Di Pietro & Butticè, 2020; Josefy et al.; 2016; Li & Zahra, 2012). Distinct from the existing literature that examine the
association between cultural characteristics and crowdfunding activity across countries (Di Pietro & Butticè, 2020), we explore the role
of cultural context in influencing the relationship between linguistic features and crowdfunding success.
The rest of the paper flows as follows. Section 2 provides a conceptual foundation and develops hypotheses. Section 3 describes data
and outlines the research methodology. Section 4 analyses empirical results and section 5 concludes.
2. Conceptual foundation and hypothesis development
2.1. Religiosity, crowdfunding, and entrepreneurial finance
Crowdfunding has emerged rapidly in recent years as part of the broader paradigm of micro-finance and crowdsourcing (Mollick,
1
The LaunchGood platform went live in October 2013 with “a commitment to highlight the incredible values of the global Muslim community
with every campaign” shown on its website. LaunchGood outperforms other popular crowdfunding platforms, including Kickstarter, GoFundMe,
Indiegogo and YouCaring, in terms of the success rate of fundraising campaigns, average pledge, and average amount raised.
2
2014; Cumming & Johan, 2019). Micro-finance channels small amounts of money to support a large number of people, particularly
those self-employed (Morduch, 2010). Crowdsourcing combines novel social and legal mechanisms to provide a new model of
collaboration, which blurs the distinction between the organization versus the individual, and professionalism versus volunteerism
(Gleasure & Feller, 2016). Crowdfunding has become a channel for entrepreneurs to fund their ideas (i.e., business ventures, social
initiatives, and creative works), an alternative to traditional sources of capital, such as banks, angel investors, and venture capital
(Belleflamme et al., 2014; Bi et al., 2017).
The increasing popularity of crowdfunding, as both a source of capital and an investment vehicle, along with recent evidence for
common anchoring of espoused values by crowdfunders, has stimulated a strand of research investigating the relationship between
religious beliefs and investment decision making in crowdfunding (Audretsch et al., 2013; Benjamin et al., 2016). Religiosity affiliation
has proven to influence financial market behavior (Chircop et al., 2017), entrepreneurial activities (Audretsch et al., 2013), and
venture capital investments (Chircop et al., 2020). In this study, as we are largely inspired by the significant growth in Islamic
crowdfunding, we focus on the effect of religious and social narratives on the success of crowdfunding projects launched on an Islamic
crowdfunding platform. Crowdfunding can be conceptualized as ‘Islamic’ if it keeps within the permitted moral principles of Islam
(halal). This can include socially responsible products, projects that enable sharing of investment risk, and the absence of an interest
rate agreed before the investment (Taha & Macias, 2014). Over the past few years, Islamic crowdfunding has shown impressive growth
in both Muslim countries and western financial markets reaching an estimated value of $25 million globally in 2015 (Malik, 2015).
According to the Global Islamic Fintech Report 2021, the market size of Islamic fintech is estimated to be $49 billion in 2020 and
projected to reach $128 billion by 2025. Islamic crowdfunding platforms have flourished in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Egypt, the
UAE, as well as the UK and the USA.
Islamic crowdfunding bridges crowdfunding and Islamic finance, presenting great potential for future development. In contrast to
conventional financial systems in which risks can be transferred and shifted, Islamic finance is a financial system structured on a risk-
sharing principle that provides a spectrum of instruments covering both social and commercial purposes (Askari et al., 2012). In the
commercial context, the funders share business risks with the entrepreneurs in return for shares in profits and losses (Iqbal & Mirakhor,
2007). In the social context, burdens of social problems are shared among people through redistributive risk-sharing instruments, such
as zakat and waqf. Crowdfunding is compliant with Islamic finance principles of risk-sharing except for those projects hosted on
lending-based crowdfunding platforms. Crowdfunding provides a mechanism to share the success and risk of the projects between
entrepreneurs and crowdfunders and promotes cooperation among individuals to gather the capital of the masses for the benefit of
mankind. Islamic finance and crowdfunding are thus a good match (Taha & Macias, 2014) by sharing an identical philosophical
foundation of promoting risk-sharing, channeling capital to the real economy, democratizing wealth, and encouraging entrepre
neurship. The wide variety of Islamic finance instruments enables crowdfunding practices to serve both commercial and social ob
jectives.2 Islamic crowdfunding may attract a larger audience as it generally focuses on projects that bring positive social impact to
communities. This tends to be attractive to Muslims worldwide as the philanthropic manner is very much a required behavior for most
Muslims (Munshi, 2018), as well as wider audiences who seek opportunities in social and ethical investment. Islamic crowdfunding has
become part of a comprehensive entrepreneurial ecosystem, which can help to close the entrepreneurial financing gap within the
Islamic finance industry.
2.2. The moral foundation theory
Moral psychology has regained popularity and experienced a renaissance as social psychologists, neuroscientists and behavioral
economists begin to consider the moral judgment in decision making as a central of inquiry (Haidt & Graham, 2007). Kohlberg’s
(1982) cognitive-development approach believes that people reason at three moral levels sequentially – the fear of punishments and
desire for rewards, followed by the community’s norms and expectations, and then the autonomous reasoning with moral principles
centering on rights and justice. His work has influenced much of the subsequent research on morality with later attention shifted to the
importance of community and collectivity, the role of religion, spirituality, and divinity in people’s moral lives, and interpersonal
relationships (Jensen, 1991, 1998).
When analyzing people’s moral reasoning and values, three types of ethics emerge – autonomy, community, and divinity. The
ethics of autonomy focuses on individuals’ needs, desires, and preferences and addresses individuals’ interests, well-being, and rights
of individuals, and equality (Jensen, 1991), which relies on regulative concepts such as harm, rights, and justice to protect individuals’
choice and promote the exercise of individual will (Shweder et al., 1997). The ethics of community focuses on the people’s membership
in groups (i.e., family, community, or nation) and their roles and positions within the groups (Jensen, 1991). The main concerns are the
customs, interests, and welfare of groups and community-oriented virtues such as self-moderation and loyalty toward social group and
their members (Jensen, 1991). The ethics of divinity considers that people are envisioned as a spiritual or religious entity with a moral
goal of being connected to pure or divine. People behave following divine and natural law, injunctions, and lessons in sacred texts,
strive to avoid spiritual degradation and come closer to moral purity (Jensen, 1991; Shweder et al., 1997).
The moral foundation theory (Haidt & Joseph, 2007) provides a conceptual framework for measuring and describing differences in
moral concerns across individuals, social groups, and cultures. Moral foundations refer to ‘the psychological foundations upon which
cultures construct their morality’ and the psychological mechanism of an individual’s moral system (Graham et al., 2011). The moral
2
Table A1 at Appendix provides a brief explanation of convergences and divergences between crowdfunding types and Islamic finance
instruments.
3
foundation theory expands the range of moral psychology phenomena concerning empathy (Gilligan, 1985) and justice (Kohlberg,
1969) and covers a much broader moral from non-Western cultures, religious practices, and political conservatives (Graham et al.,
2011). In particular, the moral foundation theory is built upon five foundations – care, reciprocity, loyalty, respect, and sanctity, which
are innately present in almost everyone. People from different cultures share similar values, such as caring for vulnerable people and
working cohesively in a group. Harm/care and fairness/reciprocity are universally valued by all individuals, while ingroup/loyalty,
authority/respect, and purity/sanctity are mostly influenced by politically conservative individuals (Haidt & Joseph, 2007). Societies’
ethics are represented by the ingroup/loyalty and authority/respect foundations (Haidt & Graham, 2007) focusing on individuals’
concern over moral values of society (Jancenelle & Javalgi, 2018; Shweder et al., 1997). Most societies also have ethic divinity that
society adheres to the existence of God and individuals comply with religious and spiritual principles (Jancenelle & Javalgi, 2018;
Shweder et al., 1997), which is captured by the purity/sanctity foundation.
Morality is an important predictor for attitudes towards the poor (Low & Wui, 2016) and future normative value creation (Jan
cenelle & Javalgi, 2018), and moral identity plays a significant role in civic engagement behavior (Sunil & Verma, 2018). As shown in
Jancenelle & Javalgi (2018), loan lenders in prosocial are likely to invest with a large pool of potential loans that provide signals of
moral foundations. Research also shows consistency between moral conception and actions that people of high moral identity have
stronger sense of engaging in prosocial activities, such as helping the community members in need, volunteering to help causes, or
caring the elderly (Aquino & Reed, 2002). As such, we expect all narratives related to moral foundations to have implications to
crowdfunders decision. Entrepreneurs who evoke moral cues in their project description, such as religious identity and social values,
are likely to remove some of the uncertainties in the eyes of crowdfunders and hence more likely to succeed in fundraising.
2.3. Narratives and crowdfunding behavior
Understanding the crowd is important in understanding crowdfunding, much like understanding angel investors and venture
capitalists is fundamental to understanding traditional investment (Josefy et al., 2017). Di Pietro & Butticè (2020) distinguish between
investment and non-investment crowdfunding models based on risk to crowdfunders. In investment models, crowdfunders are
motivated by financial returns from interest payment in lending-based crowdfunding and shareholdings in equity-based crowd
funding. In non-investment models, the main motivations for the crowd are the non-monetary benefits from reward-based crowd
funding and philanthropic or sponsorship reasons (i.e., the opportunity to participate and help) with no expectation of remuneration in
the case of donation-based crowdfunding.
Recent research has highlighted the importance of narratives in crowdfunding. The entrepreneurial narrative is essential in the
crowdfunding market as entrepreneurs rely on this channel to inform the targeted audiences about their projects, purposes, funding
goals, and other details (Pietraszkiewicz et al., 2017; Johan & Zhang, 2020). Written entrepreneurial narratives can signal the quality
of ventures and attract investors to the projects’ compelling ideas (Gartner, 2007), while excessive promotional language may harm
fundraising (Johan & Zhang, 2020). Linguistic styles, such as the use of emotional words, cognitive processes, and sensory-related
words, make campaigns more understandable to audiences and increase the success of social campaigns (Parhankangas & Renko,
2017). Allison et al. (2015) find more money raised from online microlending when narratives present the venture project as an
opportunity to help others, while Pietraszkiewicz et al. (2017) report an increased number of investors and chance of achieving the
funding goal when using prosocial words in a project’s description. Focusing on moral cues, Jancenelle & Javalgi (2018) report that
projects signaling a universal moral foundation (i.e., harm/care and fairness/reciprocity) are more likely to attract funds from pro
social lenders. Moss et al. (2018) find that crowdfunders lend more quickly to microenterprises positioning themselves within a single
linguistic category, in favor of social causes over economic causes. However, the existing research is inadequate in exploring the rich
features of languages, such as psychologically derived moral, religious, and social languages (Heon et al., 2019; Jancenelle & Javalgi,
2018; Pietraszkiewicz et al., 2017). We know little about how entrepreneurs’ religious and social narratives influence crowdfunders’
decision-making, and this study is to address the issues.
2.4. Hypothesis development
2.4.1. Religious narrative and crowdfunding success

Religion has institutionalized instruments to propagate charitable behavior and encourage proponents to collaborate to support
each other’s needs for social or commercial purposes. Each global religion has its own unique tradition of giving, but all place a strong
emphasis on nurturing altruistic ties with charity, and the heart of faith-based giving is often a sense of selflessness, sacrifice, and an
afterlife in which deeds are accounted for (Emmons & Paloutzian, 2003). People tend to give charitably because of the responsibility
towards society. Receiving a return on charity in the afterlife is a powerful driver of religious giving motivations. Previous studies have
shown the influence of religion on charitable and prosocial behavior (Lim & MacGregor, 2012). Religious preference increases the
propensity to give in favor of education and charities (Showers et al., 2011). In the Islamic context, the motives for charitable giving
may vary, from directly helping the distressed people (e.g., infaq, sadaqa) and obligational motives (e.g., zakat), to helping the public in
general (e.g., waqf) (Ismail et al., 2013).
Religion promotes cooperation, generosity, collaboration, and solidarity. Crowdfunding emerges as an innovative solution to
broaden its economic impact, including supporting for entrepreneurial projects. People are more sensitive to religious cues from
project narratives in their philanthropic behavior. While internal religiosity can be seen as personal and private, it is profoundly social,
as people develop their religious thinking through social institutions and express them through a common language (Einolf, 2011). We
conjecture that crowdfunding audiences are sensitive to the religious languages demonstrated by entrepreneurs in their project
4
description and linguistic narrative associated with religious attributes can help persuade people’s participation in online fundraising
and thus have a positive impact on crowdfunding performance. Therefore, religious persuasiveness by narrating religious identity is an
effective way to invite funding participation in an Islamic crowdfunding site. As such, we propose the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1. ((H1):) Religious narrative has a positive effect on crowdfunding success.
2.4.2. Social narratives and crowdfunding success

In a traditional investment context, investors are assumed to maximize profit and motivated to provide capital in the hope of
receiving a financial return. However, many researchers especially in the field of microfinance and crowdfunding, have generally
supported the prosocial investment view that investors maximize the utility of the investment through non-monetary returns such as
‘community benefits’ and ‘privilege feelings’ associated with helping the entrepreneurs and making new entrepreneurial projects
possible (Belleflamme et al. 2014). Projects that emphasize social value such as conscientiousness, courage, empathy, integrity, and
warmth increase investors’ confidence and the likelihood of investment (Moss et al., 2015) People are more likely to support other
members of a community if they evoke social concern in their presentations (Davis, 2018). Allison et al. (2013) suggest a warm glow
effect – a warm glow increases the probability of engaging in prosocial behavior and entrepreneurs who evoke a warm glow feeling are
more likely to secure funding faster.
Investment decision-making in prosocial crowdfunding is mainly guided by emotional and psychological motives consistent with
charitable giving (Galak et al., 2011). Allison et al. (2015) find that entrepreneurial narratives that boost intrinsic motivation (desire to
help others) has a stronger effect than language associated with extrinsic motivation (potential future rewards) on the choice of
microlender to provide capital to needy entrepreneurs. Prosocial lenders seem less inclined to lend to borrowers that emphasize a
desire for economic orientation, while they seem to be more attracted to those exhibiting current hardship or a concern of social value
creation (Jancenelle et al., 2018).
Narratives that emphasize social processes may help to build social empathy with the target audience (Heon et al., 2019). Social
narratives as a vital source of background information may function as a peripheral cue and affect individuals’ assessment and
judgments (Heon et al., 2019), possibly revealing their social position, social concerns, and social status (Kacewicz et al., 2013).
Message receivers utilize linguistic cues in their social judgments (Toma & D’Angelo, 2014). People who are willing to contribute
financial resources to improve others’ lives or support social entrepreneurs (Heon et al., 2019) are more likely to be influenced by
social linguistic narratives that highlight the instrumental role of the projects in improving social life. If entrepreneurs appeal to
prospective funders by utilizing the linguistic properties and when potential funders feel closer to project creators via linguistic
narratives, support is more likely to occur. Moss et al. (2018) find that entrepreneurs receive financial resources quickly when their
microenterprises strengthen social virtues using linguistic narratives. We argue that social narratives with more information on social
concerns are more likely to attract crowdfunders and raise financial resources. As such, we propose the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2. ((H2):) Social narrative has a positive effect on crowdfunding success.
2.4.3. Linguistic narratives and crowdfunding success: The role of culture

Josefy et al. (2016) argue that the nature of the funding communities is an important determinant in crowdfunding success and
suggest the integration of community and cultural constructs into models of venture funding. Societal culture intertwines with moral
ethics, and both are embedded in linguistic narratives. Individuals are nested in and influenced by a particular culture (Hofstede et al.,
2010). Research shows that cultural dimensions (e.g., individualism-collectivisms) can explain volunteering in an organization
(Parboteeah et al., 2004) and charitable giving (Kemmelmeier et al., 2006). Masculine language is found to be negatively correlated
with money raised, while feminine language is positively correlated with fundraising success (Gorbatai & Nelson, 2015). Di Pietro &
Butticè (2020) investigate the impact of the national informal institutional environment (such as cultural characteristics) on crowd
funding, reporting that individualistic societies are more open to using crowdfunding.
The moral foundation theory indicates that the effectiveness of linguistic narratives (i.e., universal moral cues) varies with culture
because of their relevance to social value creation. Communities with different cultural constructs may vary in reacting to moral cues
and socially normal. The universal moral foundation is found to have a stronger effect on prosocial crowdfunding success than pri
marily conservative moral foundations (Jancenelle & Javalgi, 2018). Based on the moral foundation theory, we map religious cues and
social cues into the narrow and universal moral foundations, respectively. We conjecture that societal culture can influence the
materialization of the effect of religious and social narratives on crowdfunding campaigns, and we propose the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 3. ((H3):) The effect of religious and social narratives on crowdfunding success varies with national societal culture.
3. Methodology
3.1. Sample and CATA analysis
We collect data for projects hosted on LaunchGood (https://www.launchgood.com), a global Islamic donation-based crowdfunding
5
platform for business and consumer financing (DIEDC, 2018).3 Entrepreneurs seek financial resources for both business (commercial)
and social initiatives, including film & video, technology, education, music, art, publishing, food, fashion, and others. Project nar
ratives provide information to prospective funders. Our sample of Islamic crowdfunding projects offers an ideal setting for testing our
hypotheses. Islamic crowdfunding enables individuals or organizations to collaborate and support each other’s needs by pooling re
sources for social or commercial purposes (Adam et al., 2015; Alam et al., 2019). Such a platform perfectly matches crowdfunders who
put ideas and social values as a dominant reference in their investment decision (Lehner et al., 2015) with entrepreneurs who put more
emphasis on caring and helping over profit maximization (Zahra et al., 2009).
Applying Python to extract project information, the final sample consists of 17,000 completed successful and unsuccessful cam
paigns from 91 countries across the world from inception (2013) to 2020 (see the country-year sample distribution in Table A4 in
Appendix). Each project profile includes structured data (e.g., amount raised, funding goal, country, picture) and unstructured textual
information (i.e., project description). Unstructured descriptions are converted into text files for Computer-Assisted-Text-Analysis
(CATA). We employ the commonly used language analysis tool – Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software – to analyze
written text on a word-by-word basis and classify words into predefined linguistic categories. The word categories by LIWC are derived
from psychological theories and have been assigned by independent judges over 70 linguistic dimensions (Parhankangas & Renko,
2017).
3.2. Linguistic narrative measure
To measure religious narrative, we extend religious identity words (e.g., mosque, church, altar) in the LIWC’s word dictionary in
three dimensions to reflect the specificity of Islamic religious language. First, we add words commonly used in Islamic finance to
propagate charitable behavior and encourage financial contribution, such as zakat, sadaqa, infaq, and waqf. These instruments are the
source of Islamic social finance and increasingly extend to entrepreneurial finance (Iman et al., 2017). Second, we add words embedded
with religious persuasive cues about the ‘after-life’ benefits of religious investment (see Hrung, 2004), such as paradise, rewards,
blessing, and hereafter. Thirds, we add words related to certain religious festivities (i.e., fasting) that are associated with higher
prosocial behavior (Haruvy et al., 2018) and poverty, such as poor, orphans, hunger, and homeless (including their Arabic translation,
e.g., yatim, miskin). The final list of our religious dictionary words includes 69 words (word roots). Then, we define Religious narrative as
the total count of religious words scaled by the total word count of the project description. To measure social narrative, we employ the
prosocial words dictionary of 127 words developed by Frimer (2015). We define Social narrative as the total count of prosocial words
scaled by the total word count of the project description.4 Following the literature (e.g., Anglin et al., 2018), we also include a set of
emotional and economic narrative variables related to project description – Economic words, Positive words, and Negative words, defined
as the total count of respective word type scaled by the total word count of the project description.
3.3. Empirical estimation strategy and model specification
A unique feature of LaunchGood is its Keep-it-all model that allows entrepreneurs to keep funds raised even if the amount is under
the fundraising target (Cumming et al., 2020), which enables us to measure crowdfunding success from different perspectives.5
Following literature (Bi et al., 2017), we define Contribution as the average monetary contribution per crowdfunder for the project to
represent crowdfunder behavior. A higher individual contribution indicates a higher potential market for the projects or products
(Anglin et al., 2018). The number of Crowdfunder is employed to measure the crowdfunding success in attracting backers. The
empirical model is specified as in Eq. (1), estimated using Least Square Dummy Variable (LSDV) estimator.
Yi = α0 + β1 Xij + β2 Zij + β3 Cj + β4 yeari + εij (1)
where Y denotes crowdfunding success; Xij denotes religious/social narrative variables; Zij denotes a set of control variables; Cj
denotes country or region fixed effects; yeari denotes year fixed effect; and ε denotes the error terms.
We also define a dummy variable – Success, taking a value of 1 for projects that achieved or exceeded their fundraising target. We
adopt a logistic model, as shown in Eq. (2), to empirically test whether religious or social narratives can predict the success of
crowdfunding campaigns,
pt
log = α0 + β1 Xij + β2 Zij + β3 Cj + β4 yeari + εij (2)
1 − pt
where pt = P (Success = 1) indicates the probability of project success.
Following the literature, we include a set of control variables. In terms of campaign characteristics (e.g., Block et al., 2018; Mollick,
3
The success rate is 51% at LaunchGood, 37% at Kickstarter, and less than 10% at GoFundMe and Indiegogo, while the average amount raised is
$10,000 at LaunchGood, $7,400 Kickstarter, and $2,432 at GoFundMe (https://www.launchgood.com).
4
Table A2 at Appendix provides details for religious word dictionary and social words dictionary.
5
In comparison, equity crowdfunding platforms in the US follow an “all or nothing” rule, where the entrepreneur may only keep the capital raised
if the stated fundraising goal is achieved. The "keep it all” model allows both the entrepreneur and the crowd to share the risk of an underfunded
project being allowed to go ahead (underfunded projects are less likely to develop the business or innovation successfully). See Cumming et al.
(2020) for more details.
6
Table 1
Descriptive statistics.
Variable Obs. Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
Contribution 17,000 67.953 351.468 0 30,336

Crowdfunder 17,000 153.705 716.565 0 24,180
Success (dummy) 17,000 0.210 0.407 0 1
Raised fund 17,000 8,300.394 44,623.470 0 2,562,226
Religious narrative 17,000 3.011 2.266 0 21.050
Social narrative 17,000 5.388 2.531 0 21.740
Positive word 17,000 4.102 2.170 0 100
Negative word 17,000 1.339 1.529 0 12.500
Economic word 17,000 2.120 2.113 0 16.670
Wordcount 17,000 262.970 134.648 1 1,766
GDP growth 17,000 − 2.093 5.766 − 59.7 64
Interest rate 17,000 2.435 3.376 − 0.52 30
Picture 17,000 2.971 4.008 0 66
Network (dummy) 17,000 0.293 0.455 0 1
Experience 17,000 0.590 0.492 0 1
Supporter 17,000 7.919 61.812 0 1,680
Target 17,000 21113.600 85988.430 10 3,200,000
Organization (dummy) 17,000 0.444 0.497 0 1
Update (dummy) 17,000 0.157 0.363 0 1
Power distance 17,000 0.484 0.181 0.11 1
Individualism 17,000 0.721 0.280 0.06 0.910
Masculinity 17,000 0.596 0.077 0.05 0.950
Uncertainty avoidance 17,000 0.471 0.130 0.08 1
Long-term orientation 17,000 0.372 0.141 0 1
Indulgence 17,000 0.575 0.213 0 1
This table reports summary statistics of the 17,000 campaigns from LaunchGood platform from 2013 to 2020. Contribution is the average monetary
contribution per crowdfunder. Crowdfunder is the total number of crowdfunders. Success is (1 = yes) a dummy variable whether a project achieves the
funding goal. Raised fund is the total amount of money raised during the campaign. Religious and Social Narrative is the total count of religious/social
words scaled by the total word count of the project description. Positive/Negative/Economic Word is the total count of positive/negative/money-related
words scaled by the total word count of the project description. Wordcount is the total word count of the project description. Picture is the number of
picture display. Network is (1 = yes) a dummy variable whether the entrepreneur shares his/her Facebook link. Experience is (1 = yes) a dummy
variable whether the entrepreneur has prior campaign experience. Supporter is the number of supporters from other campaign organizers in the
platform. Target is the project funding goal. Organization is (1 = yes) a dummy variable whether the project is initiated by an organization. Update is (1
= yes) a dummy variable whether the project provides updates. Power Distance is the country score of the hosted project in power distance index of the
national culture. Individualism is the country score of the hosted project in individualism versus collectivism of the national culture. Masculinity is the
country score of the hosted project in masculinity versus femininity of the national culture. Uncertainty Avoidance is the country score of the hosted
project in uncertainty avoidance index of the national culture. Long-term Orientation is the country score of the hosted project in long term orientation
versus short term normative orientation of the national culture. Indulgence is the country score of the hosted project in indulgence versus restrain of
the national culture.
2014), we include Target defined as the project funding goal, Picture defined as the number of picture display, Wordcount defined as the
total word count of the project description, Supporters defined as the number of supporters from other campaign organizers in the
platform, Organization taking a value of 1 for projects initiated by an organization and 0 otherwise, and Update taking a value of 1 for
projects providing updates and 0 otherwise. In terms of entrepreneurial characteristics (e.g., Ahlers et al., 2015; Anglin et al., 2018),
we include Experience taking a value of 1 for entrepreneurs with prior campaign experience and 0 otherwise, and Network taking a
value of 1 for entrepreneurs posting their Facebook link in the campaign and 0 otherwise. We also control for the effect of country-level
characteristics by including GDP growth and Interest rate (e.g., Gompers & Lerner, 1999; Hsieh & Vu, 2021; Ning et al., 2015).
To test our third hypothesis on the mediating role of national culture, we augment the baseline model in Eq. (1) by introducing
Hofstede’s (1980) six cultural dimensions (power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation,
and indulgence) and their interaction terms, as shown in Eq. (3).
Yi = α0 + β1 Xij + β2 Culj + β3 Culj × Xi,j + β2 Zij + β5 Cj + β6 yeari + εij (3)
where Y denotes the contribution per crowdfunder, and Culj denotes cultural dimensions.
The sample statistics are presented in Table 1. On average, projects aim to raise $21,114 (ranging from $10 to $3.2 million) while
secured $8,300 from 154 crowdfunders ($68 per crowdfunder). 21% of projects are successful in reaching their goal, which is similar
to that in Cox & Nguyen (2018). Our sample provides a sharp contrast to other leading donation-based platforms such as Indiegogo
where entrepreneurs, on average, only raise around $3,500 from 307 backers (Kim et al., 2016). This highlights the more influential
and comprehensive nature of our Islamic crowdfunding sample.
In our sample, the correlation coefficients (reported Table A3 in Appendix) reveal low correlation among the independent vari
ables, especially between religious narrative and social narrative, suggesting that they are not overlapping or interchangeable. We
apply log transformation to all monetary variables, narrative word count variables, and culture dimensions to address the skewness of
the dataset (Anglin et al., 2018) and alleviate the influence of extreme values (Sauerwald et al., 2016). For variables with a value of
7
Table 2
Religious narrative.
Yi = α0 + β1 Xij + β2 Zij + β3 Cj + β4 yeari + εij This table reports the results of the above model verifying the effect of religious narrative on performance. Y denotes
crowdfunding performance, measured by contribution, crowdfunder, and success; Xij denotes religious narrative variable; Zij denotes a set of control variables; Cj
denotes country or region fixed effects; yeari denotes year fixed effect; and ε denotes the error terms. Standard errors are in parentheses. The significant levels at
10%, 5%, and 1% are indicated by *, **, and ***, respectively.
Variables Contribution Crowdfunder Success

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Religious narrative 0.134*** 0.119*** 0.135*** 0.115*** 0.061*** 0.031*

(0.021) (0.022) (0.023) (0.024) (0.018) (0.019)
Emotion/economic narrative
Positive 0.028 0.092*** 0.144***
(0.030) (0.032) (0.027)
Negative 0.238*** 0.217*** 0.118***
(0.021) (0.022) (0.018)
Economic − 0.042* − 0.097*** − 0.036**
(0.022) (0.023) (0.018)
Project characteristics
Picture 0.021*** 0.021*** 0.082*** 0.079*** 0.012** 0.012**
(0.006) (0.006) (0.007) (0.007) (0.005) (0.005)
Network 0.741*** 0.722*** 0.944*** 0.932*** 0.471*** 0.458***
(0.050) (0.050) (0.055) (0.056) (0.043) (0.044)
Experience 0.004 − 0.011 0.605*** 0.594*** 0.243*** 0.241***
(0.053) (0.053) (0.059) (0.059) (0.047) (0.047)
Supporter 0.001*** 0.001*** 0.002*** 0.002*** 0.002*** 0.002***
(0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.001) (0.001)
Update (dummy) 0.813*** 0.793*** 2.977*** 2.957*** 1.232*** 1.229***
(0.052) (0.052) (0.070) (0.070) (0.052) (0.052)
Wordcount 0.108** 0.144*** 0.255*** 0.283*** 0.071** 0.082**
(0.043) (0.043) (0.042) (0.043) (0.034) (0.036)
Target 0.632*** 0.623*** 1.003*** 0.997*** − 0.240*** − 0.239***
(0.015) (0.015) (0.017) (0.017) (0.013) (0.013)
Organization (dummy) − 0.514*** − 0.428*** − 0.239*** − 0.158*** − 0.408*** − 0.369***
(0.053) (0.053) (0.059) (0.060) (0.047) (0.048)
Macroeconomic environment
GDP growth 0.018** 0.025*** 0.023*** 0.028*** 0.018** 0.020**
(0.008) (0.008) (0.008) (0.008) (0.008) (0.008)
Interest rate 0.033*** 0.021* − 0.014 − 0.023* 0.031*** 0.030***
(0.011) (0.011) (0.013) (0.013) (0.009) (0.009)
Constant 0.467 0.271 − 5.240*** − 5.514*** 1.184 0.843
(0.498) (0.510) (0.897) (0.906) (1.206) (1.209)
Year FE yes yes yes yes yes yes
Country/region FE yes yes yes yes yes yes
N 17,000 17,000 17,000 17,000 17,000 17,000
adj. R-sq/Pseudo R2 0.286 0.292 0.426 0.430 0.090 0.094
zero, we use an inverse hyperbolic since transformation: sinh− 1(y) = log(yi + (y2i + 1)1/2 (Nyberg et al., 2010) and the interpretation of
transformed values are identical to natural log transformation (Burbidge et al., 1988).
4. Empirical results
In this section, we empirically test our hypotheses. In all regression, we control for year and country/region fixed effects and
consider heteroscedasticity and robust standard errors (White, 1980). We perform the multicollinearity test for all explanatory var
iables and all variance inflation factors (VIFs) are below 5, indicating that our regressions do not suffer from a serious multicollinearity
problem.
4.1. The effect of religious narratives on crowdfunding success
Table 2 presents the estimation results for religious narratives using three measures of crowdfunding performance – contribution
per crowdfunder in columns (1)-(2), the number of crowdfunders in columns (3)-(4), and the success dummy in columns (5)-(6). The
coefficient on Religious narrative is positive and statistically significant across the board, suggesting that religious narratives have a
significant positive impact on crowdfunding success regardless of performance measures used. When the use of religious narratives
increases by 1%, the individual funding contribution (columns 1–2) and the number of crowdfunders (columns 3–4) increase by about
0.12–0.13%. On average, project descriptions contain about 8 religious words (=3% × 263). Taking column (2) as an example, 1 more
religious word (=12.5% increase in religious narratives) will attract more individual contribution by about $1 (=0.12%×12.5×$68)
and total funding by $153 (=$1 × 153 crowdfunders). The results from the logistic model in Eq. (2) are reported in columns (5)-(6),
8
Table 3
Social narrative.
Yi = α0 + β1 Xij + β2 Zij + β3 Cj + β4 yeari + εij This table reports the results of the above model verifying the effect of social narrative on performance. Y denotes
crowdfunding performance, measured by contribution, crowdfunder, and success; Xij denotes religious narrative variable; Zij denotes a set of control variables; Cj
denotes country or region fixed effects; yeari denotes year fixed effect; and ε denotes the error terms. Standard errors are in parentheses. The significant levels at
10%, 5%, and 1% are indicated by *, **, and ***, respectively.

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Social narrative 0.210*** 0.236*** 0.130*** 0.131*** 0.111*** 0.080***

(0.028) (0.031) (0.029) (0.033) (0.024) (0.027)
Emotion/economic languages
Positive words − 0.021 0.080** 0.126***
(0.031) (0.033) (0.028)
Negative words 0.236*** 0.220*** 0.118***
(0.021) (0.021) (0.018)
Economic words − 0.074*** − 0.112*** − 0.047**
(0.022) (0.023) (0.019)
Picture 0.026*** 0.023*** 0.085*** 0.081*** 0.014*** 0.012**
(0.006) (0.006) (0.007) (0.007) (0.005) (0.005)
Network 0.678*** 0.666*** 0.894*** 0.889*** 0.440*** 0.442***
(0.050) (0.050) (0.056) (0.056) (0.043) (0.044)
Experience − 0.006 − 0.022 0.600*** 0.589*** 0.240*** 0.239***
(0.053) (0.053) (0.059) (0.059) (0.047) (0.047)
Supporter 0.001*** 0.001*** 0.002*** 0.002*** 0.002*** 0.002***
(0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.001) (0.001)
Update (dummy) 0.833*** 0.816*** 2.985*** 2.965*** 1.244*** 1.238***
(0.052) (0.052) (0.070) (0.070) (0.052) (0.052)
Wordcount 0.072* 0.114*** 0.224*** 0.258*** 0.055 0.075**
(0.042) (0.043) (0.042) (0.042) (0.034) (0.036)
Target 0.644*** 0.631*** 1.014*** 1.006*** − 0.234*** − 0.237***
(0.014) (0.015) (0.017) (0.017) (0.013) (0.013)
(0.052) (0.053) (0.058) (0.059) (0.047) (0.048)
Macro environment
GDP growth 0.018** 0.024*** 0.024*** 0.029*** 0.017** 0.019**
(0.008) (0.008) (0.008) (0.008) (0.008) (0.008)
Interest rate 0.030*** 0.017 − 0.016 − 0.027** 0.030*** 0.029***
(0.011) (0.011) (0.013) (0.013) (0.009) (0.009)
Constant 0.290 0.162 − 5.276*** − 5.544*** 1.064 0.794
(0.510) (0.524) (0.902) (0.912) (1.237) (1.228)
N 17,000 17,000 17,000 17,000 17,000 17,000
adj. R-sq/Pseudo R2 0.287 0.293 0.425 0.429 0.090 0.094
suggesting that the use of religious narratives boost the chance of project success. When religious narrative increases by 1%, the
probability of project achieving funding goal increases by about 6% as in column (5). The results provide strong evidence supporting
our first hypothesis that Religious narrative has a positive effect on crowdfunding success (H1). The findings are consistent with the
religious preference in charitable behavior (Helms & Thornton, 2012; Showers et al., 2011).
In our analysis, we include additional explanatory variables to capture the communicative linguistic features of the project
description. We find that crowdfunding performance is positively associated with emotional languages (Positive and Negative) but
negatively associated with economic languages (Economic) and these effects are particularly significant for the probability of project
success in columns (5)-(6). The results are consistent with the literature that crowdfunders tend to enjoy more on non-monetary return
(Belleflamme et al., 2014). People prefer to support those exhibiting hardship or concern for people, while prosocial lenders seem less
inclined to lend when borrowers exhibit a desire for economic success or positive returns in the future (Jancenelle et al., 2018).
The control variables themselves also reveal useful information to understand factors promoting crowdfunding success in the
context of Islamic crowdfunding. Consistent with expectation and literature that more information about the project, such as picture
display, social network, supporter, experience, and updates, reduce the asymmetric information problem and improve crowdfunding
performance (Block et al., 2018; Hornuf & Schwienbacher, 2018; Mollick, 2014). A high funding target (Target) encourages individual
contribution, attracts more crowdfunders but lowers the probability of achieving the target. Project campaigns initiated by individual
entrepreneurs are generally more successful than those initiated by organizations. Consistent with entrepreneurial finance literature
(Ning et al., 2015), we find that crowdfunding projects are more successful in an expansionary economic environment (GDP growth).
We find that under higher interest rates, projects attract fewer crowdfunders but more money per contributor and projects are more
likely to succeed. This result is different from the literature that a higher interest rate encourages investors to invest in alternative
opportunities (e.g., banks) for a higher return (Gompers & Lerner, 1999). A plausible reason is that our sample is donation-based
9
Table 4
Religious and Social narratives.
Yi = α0 + β1 Xij + β2 Zij + β3 Cj + β4 yeari + εij This table reports the results of the above model verifying the effect of religious and social narrative on performance. Y
denotes crowdfunding performance, measured by contribution, crowdfunder, and success; Xij denotes religious narrative variable; Zij denotes a set of control
variables; Cj denotes country or region fixed effects; yeari denotes year fixed effect; and ε denotes the error terms. Standard errors are in parentheses. The significant
levels at 10%, 5%, and 1% are indicated by *, **, and ***, respectively.

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Religious narrative 0.109*** 0.105*** 0.122*** 0.108*** 0.048*** 0.027

(0.022) (0.022) (0.023) (0.024) (0.019) (0.019)
Social narrative 0.185*** 0.224*** 0.102*** 0.118*** 0.100*** 0.076***
(0.029) (0.031) (0.030) (0.033) (0.025) (0.027)
Positive words − 0.048 0.052 0.119***
(0.031) (0.034) (0.028)
Negative words 0.227*** 0.211*** 0.115***
(0.021) (0.022) (0.018)
Economic words − 0.079*** − 0.116*** − 0.049**
(0.022) (0.023) (0.019)
Picture 0.025*** 0.022*** 0.084*** 0.080*** 0.013** 0.012**
(0.006) (0.006) (0.007) (0.007) (0.005) (0.005)
Network 0.704*** 0.691*** 0.923*** 0.915*** 0.452*** 0.448***
(0.050) (0.050) (0.056) (0.056) (0.044) (0.044)
Experience − 0.006 − 0.022 0.600*** 0.588*** 0.239*** 0.238***
(0.053) (0.053) (0.059) (0.059) (0.047) (0.047)
Supporter 0.001*** 0.001*** 0.002*** 0.002*** 0.002*** 0.002***
(0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.001) (0.001)
Update (dummy) 0.839*** 0.823*** 2.992*** 2.973*** 1.248*** 1.240***
(0.052) (0.052) (0.070) (0.070) (0.052) (0.052)
Wordcount 0.090** 0.133*** 0.245*** 0.278*** 0.062* 0.079**
(0.043) (0.043) (0.042) (0.043) (0.035) (0.036)
Target 0.636*** 0.622*** 1.005*** 0.997*** − 0.237*** − 0.239***
(0.015) (0.015) (0.017) (0.017) (0.013) (0.013)
(0.053) (0.053) (0.059) (0.060) (0.047) (0.048)
Macro environment
GDP growth 0.016** 0.022*** 0.022*** 0.027*** 0.016** 0.019**
(0.008) (0.008) (0.008) (0.008) (0.008) (0.008)
Interest rate 0.032*** 0.018 − 0.014 − 0.025* 0.031*** 0.029***
(0.011) (0.011) (0.013) (0.013) (0.009) (0.009)
Constant 0.182 0.106 − 5.397*** − 5.601*** 1.031 0.785
(0.516) (0.530) (0.909) (0.918) (1.233) (1.226)
N 17,000 17,000 17,000 17,000 17,000 17,000
adj. R-sq/Pseudo R2 0.288 0.294 0.426 0.430 0.091 0.094
crowdfunding. Higher interest rates normally indicate booming economy and people are more generous in supporting entrepreneurs.
4.2. The effect of social narratives on crowdfunding success
Table 3 reports the estimation results for social narratives in terms of individual funding contribution in columns (1)-(2), the total
number of crowdfunders in columns (3)-(4), and project success in columns (5)-(6). The coefficient on Social narrative is positive and
statistically significant at the 1% significance level in all regressions, suggesting that the use of social linguistic style improves
crowdfunding performance. In particular, following a 1% increase in the use of social languages, the average funding contribution per
crowdfunder will increase by 0.21–0.24% (columns 1–2), the number of crowdfunders will increase by about 0.13% (columns 3–4),
and the probability of project success increase by about 8–11% (columns 5–6). Project descriptions on average contain about 14
religious words (=5.388% × 263). 1 more social word represents a 7.1% increase in social narratives, which will attract more indi
vidual contributions by $1.16 (=0.24%×7.1×$68) and total funding by $177 (=$1.16 × 153 crowdfunders), as indicated in column
(2). The results confirm that social narrative plays an important role in crowdfunders’ funding decisions, supporting our second hy
pothesis that Social narrative has a positive effect on crowdfunding success (H2). The finding is consistent with prosocial behavior
literature that entrepreneurs who evoke warm-glow feelings, the rhetoric of virtue orientation, human-interest languages, and pro-
social framing are more likely to secure funding (Allison et al., 2013; Jancenelle et al., 2018; Moss et al., 2015).
Having established the significant role of religious and social narratives, respectively, we estimate the full model specification with
both religious and social narratives in the model. As shown in Table 4, our main results hold, consistent with those in Table 2 and
Table 3. The coefficients on Religious narrative and Social narrative are all statistically significant at the 1% level confirming that
10
Table 5
Religious narrative and cultural attributes.
Yi = α0 + β1 Xij + β2 Culj + β3 Culj × Xi,j + β2 Zij + β5 Cj + β6 yeari + εij This table reports the results of the above model verifying the heterogeneity of the effect of
religious narrative on the performance. Y denotes crowdfunding performance – contribution per crowdfunder; Xij denotes religious narrative variable; Culj denotes
cultural dimensions; Zij denotes a set of control variables; Cj denotes country or region fixed effects; yeari denotes year fixed effect; and ε denotes the error terms.
Standard errors are in parentheses. The significant levels at 10%, 5%, and 1% are indicated by *, **, and ***, respectively.
Variables Power distance Individualism Masculinity Uncertainty avoidance Long-term orientation Indulgence
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Religious narrative 0.182*** 0.004 − 0.133** 0.173*** 0.114*** 0.049**

(0.024) (0.029) (0.054) (0.025) (0.024) (0.025)
Culture 0.984*** − 0.655*** − 0.863* 1.976*** − 0.439 − 1.251***
(0.303) (0.215) (0.508) (0.267) (0.272) (0.159)
Religious narrative × Culture − 0.643*** 0.339*** 1.054*** − 0.539*** − 0.057 0.420***
(0.094) (0.055) (0.210) (0.127) (0.101) (0.065)
Emotion/economic language yes yes yes yes yes yes
Project characteristics yes yes yes yes yes yes
Macro environment yes yes yes yes yes yes
Constant 0.163 0.435 0.429 0.156 0.319 0.298
(0.530) (0.521) (0.523) (0.516) (0.511) (0.518)
N 17,000 17,000 17,000 17,000 17,000 17,000
adj. R-sq 0.294 0.293 0.294 0.294 0.292 0.295
Table 6
Social narrative and cultural attributes.
Yi = α0 + β1 Xij + β2 Culj + β3 Culj × Xi,j + β2 Zij + β5 Cj + β6 yeari + εij This table reports the results of the above model verifying the heterogeneity of the effect of
social narrative on the performance. Y denotes crowdfunding performance – contribution per crowdfunder; Xij denotes social narrative variable; Culj denotes
cultural dimensions; Zij denotes a set of control variables; Cj denotes country or region fixed effects; yeari denotes year fixed effect; and ε denotes the error terms.
Standard errors are in parentheses. The significant levels at 10%, 5%, and 1% are indicated by *, **, and ***, respectively.
Variables Power distance Individualism Masculinity Uncertainty avoidance Long-term orientation Indulgence
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Social narrative 0.307*** 0.085** − 0.129* 0.293*** 0.257*** 0.134***

(0.033) (0.042) (0.072) (0.034) (0.033) (0.037)
Culture 1.954*** − 1.277*** − 2.941*** 2.965*** − 1.302*** − 2.103***
(0.420) (0.283) (0.784) (0.487) (0.431) (0.300)
Social narrative × Culture − 0.753*** 0.431*** 1.545*** − 0.715*** 0.310** 0.539***
(0.123) (0.076) (0.273) (0.166) (0.136) (0.097)
Project characteristics yes yes yes yes yes yes
Macro environment yes yes yes yes yes yes
Emotion/economic language yes yes yes yes yes yes
Constant 0.058 0.638 0.920 0.026 0.101 0.404
(0.548) (0.546) (0.563) (0.530) (0.520) (0.543)
N 17,000 17,000 17,000 17,000 17,000 17,000
adj. R-sq 0.295 0.294 0.295 0.295 0.293 0.296
religious and social linguistic communicating styles help entrepreneurs raise funding. One exception is the coefficient on Religious
narrative that loses its explanatory power when we employ a binary variable for project success in column (6).
From Table 2 to Table 4, we find that the magnitude of the coefficient on Social narrative is larger than that of Religious narrative,
indicating that social languages have a stronger effect in persuading people to support crowdfunding projects, relative to religious
narratives. Employing the interpretive operationalization of variance technique (Nguyen & Cai, 2016), the decomposition of R-squared
(0.294) in column (2) of Table 4 suggests that 98.62% of R-squared6 is explained by the control variables, consistent with Jancenelle
et al. (2018). Religious narratives explain 0.34% of R-squared7, half of that explained by social narratives (0.68%).8 The change in R-
squared triggered by the social narrative is approximately twice as high as that triggered by the religious narrative. Overall, religious
6
(0.294 – 0.290) / 0.290 = 0.0138, then (1–0.0138) = 0.9862 (98.62%). 0.294 is from adj. R2 of the Table 4(2) and 0.290 is from base line model
without including religious and social narratives (the Table is not reported).
7
(0.294 – 0.293) / 0.293 = 0.0034 (0.34%). The 0.293 is from adj. R2 of the Table 3(2). After including religious narrative, the adj. R2 has
increased by 0.34%.
8
(0.294 – 0.292) / 0.292 = 0.0068 (0.68%). The 0.292 is from adj. R2 of the Table 2(2). After including social narrative, the adj. R2 has increased
by 0.68%.
11
Table 7
Robustness check.
Yi = α0 + β1 Xij + β2 Zij + β3 Cj + β4 yeari + εij This table reports robustness test results of the above model verifying the effect of religious narrative and social
narrative on the performance. Y denotes crowdfunding performance; Xij denotes religious narrative or social narrative variable; Zij denotes a set of control variables;
Cj denotes country or region fixed effects; yeari denotes year fixed effect; and ε denotes the error terms. Standard errors are in parentheses. Column (1) employs Total
Amount Raised as alternative independent variable. Column (2) limits the sample to a country of the USA. Column (3) limits the sample to the year 2020. Column (4)
employs the generalized linier modelling (GLM). Standard errors are in parentheses. The significant levels at 10%, 5%, and 1% are indicated by *, **, and ***,
respectively.
Variables Total amount raised USA 2020 GLM

(1) (2) (3) (4)
Religious narrative 0.211*** 0.124*** 0.119*** 0.105***

(0.039) (0.032) (0.031) (0.022)
Social narrative 0.340*** 0.267*** 0.160*** 0.224***
(0.056) (0.046) (0.042) (0.031)
Positive words 0.010 − 0.108** − 0.034 − 0.048
(0.056) (0.043) (0.044) (0.031)
Negative words 0.413*** − 0.102*** 0.355*** 0.227***
(0.037) (0.032) (0.027) (0.021)
Economic words − 0.207*** − 0.218*** − 0.118*** − 0.079***
(0.039) (0.031) (0.029) (0.022)
Project characteristics controls yes yes yes yes
Macro environment controls yes yes yes yes
Constant − 5.300*** 1.095* − 1.474*** 0.106
(1.263) (0.567) (0.379) (0.530)
Year FE yes yes no yes
Country/region FE yes no yes yes
N 17,000 7442 9619 17,000
adj. R-sq/Log pseudolikelihood 0.434 0.205 0.337 − 42639.9
and social narratives account for 1.02% of the individual funding contribution. Our result is comparable to literature in terms of the
magnitude of the effect – i.e., the combined effect of extrinsic and intrinsic cues in Allison et al. (2015) or market orientation and
psychological capital cues in (Jancenelle et al., 2018).
4.3. Linguistic narratives and crowdfunding success: The role of national culture
In this section, we explore how the effect of religious and social narratives on individual contribution varies with Hofstede’s (1980)
six cultural dimensions (power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, and indulgence).
Table 5 reports estimation results from Eq. (3) for religious narratives. Our main interest is the coefficient on the interaction term –
Religious narrative × Culture, which is statistically significant for all six cultural dimensions except for the long-term orientation
dimension.
In column (1), we focus on power distance that is about how a society handles inequalities and societies with a high-power distance
accept a hierarchical order. We expect the effect of religious narrative on funding contribution is weaker in high power distance
societies as people in low power distance societies strive for equality and are more likely to be generous. The negative coefficient on the
interaction term confirms our expectation. Holding all other things equal, the religious narrative becomes less effective in higher
power distance societies. With a 1% increase in the religious narrative, the contribution per crowdfunder is about 0.64% lower in high-
power distance societies than in low-power distance societies. Column (2) examines the mediating effect of individualism. In indi
vidualistic societies, the premium is placed on the interest of the individual over that of the group and ties between individuals are
loose (Hofstede et al., 2010). Our evidence shows that individualism strengthens the impact of religious narratives on individual
contribution. Countries, where individualism prevails, are more likely to embrace crowdfunding and the influences of religious
narratives tend to be stronger than their more collectivist peers. On average, religious narratives will help entrepreneurs to raise 0.34%
more money from each per crowdfunder in individualistic societies. The masculinity dimension is examined in column (3). A
masculine society represents a tougher and more competitive society with material rewards for success (Hofstede, 1980). Our results
show that a masculine society reinforces the impact of religious narratives on people’s attitudes in favor of crowdfunding, indicated by
the positive coefficient on Religious narrative × Culture. Religious narratives attract 1.05% more individual contributions in masculine-
dominated societies than in feminine-dominated societies. Column (4) moves onto uncertainty avoidance that reflects the extent to
which a society is comfortable with unknown, surprising, and unusual situations (Hofstede, 1980). We find that the positive effect of
religious narratives on crowdfunder contribution becomes weaker in uncertainty avoidance societies. It is consistent with the
expectation that religious languages become less persuasive when people are more anxious about unpredictability. Column (5) shows
that the long-term orientation has neither direct nor indirect effect on crowdfunding performance. In column (6), the coefficient on
Religious narrative × Culture (indulgence) is positive and statistically significant, suggesting that the religious narratives are more
effective in indulgence society. This result is consistent with the expectation that indulgent societies encourage emotional expression
and happiness (Hofstede et al., 2010) and people are more likely to support crowdfunding projects.
Table 6 reports estimation results for the mediating role of national culture in the relationship between social narratives and
12
crowdfunding. The results are consistent with those of religious narratives shown in Table 5. One exception is that the long-term
orientation has a significant impact on crowdfunding in column (5). In long-term oriented societies, the social narrative is more
effective in promoting crowdfunding projects, indicated by the positive and significant coefficient on Social narrative × Culture.
In short, the positive effects of religious and social narratives on crowdfunding contribution become stronger in individualistic,
masculine, and indulgent societies, but weaker in high power-distance and uncertainty avoiding societies. The long-term orientation
cultural dimension only interacts with the social narratives but exerts no significant influence on the materialization of religious
language effect. The evidence supports our third hypothesis (H3) that the effect of religious and social narratives on crowdfunding success
varies with national societal culture.
4.4. Robustness test
We perform a battery of robustness tests and results are reported in Table 7. First, we use the Total amount raised as an alternative
measure of crowdfunding success in column (1) and our main results remain unchanged for the religious and social narratives. Second,
we address the omitted-variable concern for cross-country study and conduct a single-country analysis for the USA. Our main results
hold after controlling for project type and year fixed effects in column (2). Third, we limit our sample to the year 2020 and our main
results hold during the period of global COVID-19 shock in column (3). Finally, we employ generalized linear modeling (GLM) allowing
for different error distributions and relationships between the dependent and independent variables (McCullagh, 1984) in column (4),
The coefficients of religious and social narratives remain positive and significant, reinforcing main earlier evidence.
5. Conclusion
In this study, we have investigated how the linguistic features affect crowdfunding success based on a sample from a global Islamic
donation-based crowdfunding platform – LaunchGood over the period 2013–2020. We find that project description narratives
expressing religious identity and social orientation improve crowdfunding performance. The results highlight the importance of lin
guistic narratives and provide evidence for the moral foundation theory in the context of Islamic crowdfunding. We also find that the
materialization of the linguistic effect is conditional to societal culture. Our results are robust to different estimation techniques and
different model specifications with the inclusion of a set of control variables. These findings will be of practical importance for social
entrepreneurs who need to understand backers’ different motivations to launch more effective campaigns and leverage fundraising
performance. The findings may guide entrepreneurs to communicate their goals more effectively with due attention to the cultural
background of the fundraising country. Our findings also provide useful information for a crowdfunding platform to develop different
project categories to accommodate the heterogeneity of crowdfunders’ motivations.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
Appendix
See the Table A1 & A3..
Table A1
A comparison between crowdfunding types and Islamic finance instruments.
Crowdfunding Islamic finance instruments Divergence
type
Donation Zakat: mandatory donation depending on individual’s earning. Ban on some activities (related to alcohol, pork and its
Waqf: voluntary donation of movable or immovable assets for permanent societal derivatives, gambling, and pornography)
benefits.
Infaq and sadaqa: voluntary giving in order to help people in needs.
Reward/pre- Istisna’: a sale contract in which the buyer contracts with the seller to manufacture Prohibition of some activities
selling in accordance with given specifications and at an agreed price.
Salam: a sale whereby the seller undertakes to supply some specific goods to the
buyer at a future date in exchange of an advanced price.
Equity Musharaka: a joint enterprise where two or more parties enter into a project by Prohibition of some activities and of speculative
combining either their capital or labour to share profits and losses. positions on securities
Mudharaba: a partnership contract where the owner of capital entrusts his funds to
an entrepreneur and the profits are to be shared between the parties.
loan Qard hasan: an interest free loan between the two parties for social welfare or for Prohibition of some activities, ban on interest.
short-term bridging finance
13
Table A2
Word list of religious and social dictionary.
Narrative Word list
Religious Alhamdulillah, allah, assalam*, aya*, barakah, belie*, bless*, brother, dakwah, da’wah, deed, divine, earning, faith, god, hadist, halal, heart,
hereafter, homeless, hunger, ifthar, ihsan, iman, income, infa*, inshaa*, Islam*, jaariyah, Jannah, jihad, kindness*, less fortune, marjid, messanger*,
miskin, mosque, Muslim, need*, neighbor, orphans, paradise, pbuh, pious, poor, poverty, pray*, quran*, qur’an*, qurban*, Ramadhan, religi*,
revelation, reward, rezk, sada*, salam, shola*, spirit, subhanallah, takwa, taqwa, the propthet, umma*, verse*, wakaf, waqaf, yatim, zaka*
Social Accepting, accommodat*, affect*, agreeabl*, aid*, altruis*, appreciate*, approachable, assist*, benefit*, benevolen*, biodivers*, care, caring, charit*,
collective*, commun*, compassion*, compliment, concern*, confide*, conscien*, conservation*, considerate, contribut*, cooperat*, cope*, coping*,
courteous*, courtesy, defend*, dependab*, dignity, donat*, earth, ecolog*, education, egalitar*, empath*, empower*, encourag*, environment*,
equal*, ethic*, everybod*, everyone*, facilitat*, fair*, forgiv*, freed*, genero*, gentle*, genuine*, giv*, goodhearted*, greater good, guard*, harmon*,
help*, helpful*, honest*, honourable, honorable, hospit*, human*, impartial*, inspiring, integrat*, integrity, interact*, invit*, involv*, justice, kids,
kindness, listen*, loyal*, moral*, NGO*, nice*, non-judgmental, non-profit*, not-for-profit*, nurtur*, peace*, philanthrop*, prais*, prejud*, protect*,
reciproc*, relia*, relied, rely*, respectful*, responsib*, responsiv*, righteous*, rights, role model*, selfless*, sensitiv*, serv*, share*, shari*, shield*,
sincer*, societ*, solidarit*, support*, sustainab*, sympath*, taught, teach*, team*, tender*, the people, therap*, thoughtful*, tolera*, trust*, tutor*,
underst*, universal*, unprejudiced, upright, virtuous, volunteer*
Table A3
Correlations.
Variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)
Contribution (1) 1.000

Crowdfunder (2) 0.598 1.000
Success (3) 0.293 0.380 1.000
Religious narrative (4) 0.041 0.038 − 0.004 1.000
Social narrative (5) 0.051 0.010 0.026 0.157 1.000
Positive word (6) − 0.037 − 0.045 0.041 0.223 0.378 1.000
Negative word (7) 0.106 0.091 0.047 0.061 0.022 − 0.131 1.000
Economic word (8) 0.018 − 0.016 − 0.005 0.061 0.295 0.147 − 0.019 1.000
Wordcount (9) 0.114 0.175 0.040 − 0.088 0.044 0.045 − 0.080 0.007 1.000
GDP growth (10) 0.285 0.236 0.096 − 0.022 0.034 0.000 − 0.036 0.074 0.152 1.000
Interest rate (11) 0.058 0.083 0.047 − 0.097 0.011 − 0.122 0.122 0.057 0.062 0.264 1.000
Picture (12) 0.144 0.257 0.049 − 0.007 − 0.085 − 0.044 − 0.041 − 0.184 0.293 0.151 0.027 1.000
Network (13) 0.162 0.175 0.102 − 0.086 0.092 0.018 0.036 0.074 0.106 0.029 0.005 0.065
Experience (14) − 0.084 0.015 0.012 − 0.041 0.020 − 0.018 − 0.049 0.001 − 0.007 − 0.089 − 0.001 0.052
Supporter (15) 0.034 0.051 0.082 0.010 − 0.040 0.012 − 0.022 − 0.001 − 0.017 0.034 − 0.022 0.008
Target (16) 0.152 0.198 − 0.040 0.085 − 0.001 − 0.018 − 0.035 0.005 0.064 0.051 − 0.017 0.074
Organization (17) − 0.112 − 0.034 − 0.081 − 0.083 0.014 − 0.030 − 0.141 − 0.002 0.024 − 0.137 − 0.023 0.044
Update (18) 0.216 0.407 0.206 − 0.035 − 0.067 − 0.036 0.030 − 0.020 0.119 0.173 0.086 0.201
Power distance (19) 0.087 0.145 0.055 − 0.099 0.001 − 0.107 0.090 0.085 0.115 0.305 0.593 0.096
Individualism (20) − 0.048 − 0.108 − 0.055 0.098 − 0.009 0.090 − 0.092 − 0.085 − 0.107 − 0.302 − 0.691 − 0.083
Masculinity (21) − 0.092 − 0.101 − 0.045 0.098 0.000 0.077 − 0.078 − 0.101 − 0.091 − 0.336 − 0.473 − 0.057
Uncertainty avoidance 0.191 0.157 0.072 − 0.110 0.049 − 0.091 0.066 0.098 0.095 0.434 0.562 0.028
(22)
Long-term orientation − 0.247 − 0.202 − 0.026 0.027 − 0.047 0.006 0.008 − 0.083 − 0.035 − 0.323 − 0.109 − 0.020
(23)
Indulgence (24) − 0.073 − 0.087 − 0.050 0.107 − 0.006 0.083 − 0.098 − 0.064 − 0.085 − 0.255 − 0.554 − 0.042
Variables (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24)
Network (13) 1.000

Experience (14) − 0.039 1.000
Supporter (15) 0.027 0.062 1.000
Target (16) 0.028 − 0.031 − 0.010 1.000
Organization (17) − 0.039 0.473 − 0.054 0.023 1.000
Update (18) 0.095 0.024 0.038 0.064 − 0.042 1.000
Power distance (19) − 0.011 − 0.016 − 0.011 − 0.017 − 0.029 0.128 1.000
Individualism (20) 0.021 0.008 0.018 0.033 0.043 − 0.109 − 0.888 1.000
Masculinity (21) − 0.066 0.019 0.011 0.006 0.015 − 0.094 − 0.568 0.609 1.000
Uncertainty avoidance 0.064 − 0.035 − 0.004 0.019 − 0.060 0.093 0.481 − 0.565 − 0.476 1.000
(22)
Long-term orientation − 0.104 − 0.006 − 0.032 − 0.066 0.011 − 0.106 − 0.027 − 0.109 0.025 − 0.213 1.000
(23)
Indulgence (24) 0.021 0.004 0.011 0.015 0.051 − 0.081 − 0.674 0.807 0.509 − 0.532 − 0.082 1.000
14
Table A4
Country of the projects.
No Country Year Projects
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
1 USA 9 57 231 457 797 1155 1369 2366 6441

2 UK 2 6 29 86 193 397 3772 4485
3 Canada 4 6 36 41 108 194 555 944
4 Bangladesh 3 21 71 108 700 903
5 Pakistan 1 5 15 29 80 104 298 532
6 India 3 15 27 50 70 287 452
7 Malaysia 1 6 10 61 90 254 422
8 Turkey 6 5 25 32 52 234 354
9 Syria 2 13 29 32 31 137 244
10 Nigeria 1 2 1 27 54 103 188
11 Lebanon 1 5 16 33 106 161
12 South Africa 3 2 17 18 119 159
13 Indonesia 2 7 5 33 33 64 144
14 Australia 4 1 11 20 29 32 45 142
15 Jordan 3 16 13 27 22 40 121
16 Singapore 8 12 21 22 21 84
17 Kenya 1 1 7 8 22 44 83
18 Morocco 1 2 5 18 22 33 81
19 Greece 17 11 14 16 13 71
20 Egypt 3 5 15 18 29 70
21 Ghana 2 1 1 5 15 43 67
22 Bosnia&Herzegovina 2 1 1 2 39 19 64
23 France 1 3 2 4 7 41 58
24 Ethiopia 1 3 5 14 33 56
25 Sri Lanka 1 4 4 9 8 26 52
26 Saudi Arabia 1 1 9 3 23 37
27 Senegal 1 1 4 3 8 16 33
28 Tanzania 1 1 6 11 11 30
29 Japan 1 2 6 10 9 28
30 Philippines 1 5 3 5 10 24
31 Sierra Leone 1 10 6 7 24
32 UAE 1 3 5 3 11 23
33 Germany 2 1 9 9 21
34 Malawi 1 7 5 8 21
35 Spain 1 1 3 6 9 20
36 Kashmir 2 3 7 7 19
37 Qatar 7 9 3 19
38 Austria 2 5 6 1 3 17
39 Iraq 2 1 5 9 17
40 Netherlands 2 1 1 1 3 9 17
41 New Zealand 1 9 4 14
42 Sweden 4 4 6 14
43 Libya 1 4 3 5 13
44 Brazil 1 1 6 4 12
45 Hong Kong 1 4 3 4 12
46 Norway 1 1 1 3 4 2 12
47 Mexico 2 4 1 3 1 11
48 Belgium 1 1 1 7 10
49 Russia 1 1 1 2 5 10
50 Ireland 1 3 2 3 9
51 Algeria 1 5 2 8
52 Colombia 1 1 3 3 8
53 Italy 1 2 2 3 8
54 Kazakhstan 2 1 1 4 8
55 Switzerland 1 1 4 1 1 8
56 Thailand 3 1 2 2 8
57 Puerto Rico 2 2 3 7
58 Romania 1 1 2 3 7
59 Trinidad and Tobago 3 2 2 7
60 Tunisia 1 1 1 3 1 7
61 Poland 1 4 1 6
62 Vietnam 1 5 6
63 Burkina Faso 1 1 3 5
64 China 1 2 2 5
65 Kuwait 2 1 2 5
66 Denmark 1 1 1 1 4
67 Nepal 2 2 4
(continued on next page)
15
Table A4 (continued )
No Country Year Projects
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
68 Ukraine 1 2 1 4
69 Albania 1 1 1 3
70 Costa Rica 3 3
71 Guatemala 3 3
72 Slovenia 1 1 1 3
73 Zambia 1 1 1 3
74 Bulgaria 2 2
75 Finland 1 1 2
76 Hungary 1 1 2
77 Iran 1 1 2
78 Peru 2 2
79 Samoa 2 2
80 South Korea 1 1 2
81 Czech 1 1
82 Dominican Republic 1 1
83 Honduras 1 1
84 Iceland 1 1
85 Israel 1 1
86 Jamaica 1 1
87 Malta 1 1
88 Montenegro 1 1
89 Mozambique 1 1
90 Namibia 1 1
91 Venezuela 1 1
Total project 9 68 284 687 1,226 2,157 2,950 9,619 17,000
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J. Int. Financ. Markets Inst.

Money 80 (2022) 101595

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of International Financial Markets,

Religious and social narratives and crowdfunding success

2. Conceptual foundation and hypothesis development

2.1. Religiosity, crowdfunding, and entrepreneurial finance

2.2. The moral foundation theory

2.3. Narratives and crowdfunding behavior

2.4. Hypothesis development

2.4.1. Religious narrative and crowdfunding success

2.4.2. Social narratives and crowdfunding success

2.4.3. Linguistic narratives and crowdfunding success: The role of culture

3.1. Sample and CATA analysis

3.2. Linguistic narrative measure

3.3. Empirical estimation strategy and model specification

Contribution 17,000 67.953 351.468 0 30,336

Variables Contribution Crowdfunder Success

Religious narrative 0.134*** 0.119*** 0.135*** 0.115*** 0.061*** 0.031*

4.1. The effect of religious narratives on crowdfunding success

Variables Contribution Crowdfunder Success

Social narrative 0.210*** 0.236*** 0.130*** 0.131*** 0.111*** 0.080***

Variables Contribution Crowdfunder Success

Religious narrative 0.109*** 0.105*** 0.122*** 0.108*** 0.048*** 0.027

4.2. The effect of social narratives on crowdfunding success

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Religious narrative 0.182*** 0.004 − 0.133** 0.173*** 0.114*** 0.049**

Social narrative 0.307*** 0.085** − 0.129* 0.293*** 0.257*** 0.134***

Variables Total amount raised USA 2020 GLM

Religious narrative 0.211*** 0.124*** 0.119*** 0.105***

4.4. Robustness test

Declaration of Competing Interest

See the Table A1 & A3..

Contribution (1) 1.000

Network (13) 1.000

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

1 USA 9 57 231 457 797 1155 1369 2366 6441

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

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Religious narrative 0.134* 0.119* 0.135* 0.115* 0.061*** 0.031*

Social narrative 0.210* 0.236* 0.130* 0.131* 0.111* 0.080*

Religious narrative 0.109* 0.105* 0.122* 0.108* 0.048*** 0.027

Religious narrative 0.182* 0.004 − 0.133 0.173* 0.114* 0.049**

Social narrative 0.307* 0.085 − 0.129* 0.293* 0.257* 0.134***

Religious narrative 0.211* 0.124* 0.119* 0.105*