Is Talking About the Future a Curse or a Blessing? The Effects of Future-Focused Message Framing on Fundraising Performance

The growth of crowdfunding has attracted interest from academics and managers alike. Crowdfunders are consumers in the sense that they consume start-up ideas now and their outputs in the future. Given that a crowdfunding platform is almost the only channel for entrepreneurial marketers to interactively communicate with consumers, it is pivotal to study the effectiveness of campaign message design. Thus, the goals of this paper are, first, what impact does future-focused message framing have on seeking seed-stage finance when promoting novel ideas to retail investors who may become future consumers? Second, what are other factors that can be further combined as digital communication tools to effectively improve fundraising performance? We collected a dataset of 3361 reward-based crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter, the results of which show that a future-focused campaign has a negative impact on the amount of funds raised. In order to reduce such adverse effects on fundraising, campaigners' extensive engagement is necessary especially when only a handful of reward options are available. This paper highlights the critical role of future focus in driving digital communication effectiveness and offers important implications for research and practice.