How environmental and social orientations influence the funding success of investment-based crowdfunding: The mediating role of the number of funders and the average funding amount

Environmentally and socially oriented ventures have great potential for contributing to sustainable development. Many expect crowdfunding to be able to unleash this potential by providing financial resources for such entrepreneurs. Thus, the present research investigates how different degrees of environmental and social orientation of ventures influence their success in investment-based crowdfunding. It uses and specifies warm glow theory to quantitatively analyse 318 investment-based crowdfunding projects from the USA and Germany. The results highlight that higher levels of environmental orientation increase crowdfunding success, while no significant influence is observed concerning social orientation. This positive impact of environmental orientation is mediated by the number of funders attained by a particular project. Interestingly, the influence of environmental orientation on funding success is found to be particularly strong in the USA. Based on these findings, this research draws recommendations for environmental entrepreneurs, crowdfunding platforms and policy, as well as for future research. For example, environmental entrepreneurs are advised to prominently communicate the environmental orientation of their ventures in investment-based crowdfunding campaigns, and to increase the visibility of their campaigns, as these are potentially attractive to a huge number of funders.