Standing head and shoulders above others? Complementor experience-based design and crowdfunding success on digital platforms

The proliferation and development of crowdfunding platforms have gradually enabled a disruptive way to finance new ventures through their use. Employing an integrated empirical approach and computerized text analysis, this study aims to investigate how the configuration of multiple complementor experience-based design features affects a complementor’s engagement on crowdfunding platforms. The results indicate that content entrainment, interactive engagement and social connectivity improve crowdfunding success on digital platforms. Moreover, by further refining the linguistic and psychological components, we discover that introducing function words, designing specific content related to clout, authenticity, leisure, religion and biological process, and improving word tone also enhance project funding ratio. Using these findings as a guide, we provide a series of recommendations for fundraisers to better present their crowdfunding projects by employing complementor experience-based designs on crowdfunding platforms.