Can Sustainability Disclosure Affect Crowdfunding Success?

Simona Barone

Business Strategy and the Environment, 2025, vol. 34, issue 7, 7961-7979

Abstract: Sustainability has emerged as a critical element in entrepreneurial finance, yet its role in reward‐based crowdfunding (RBC) remains underexplored. Existing studies on sustainability and crowdfunding primarily focus on equity‐based models, specific project types, or single‐country analyses, leading to mixed findings and limited generalizability. To address this gap, we conducted a cross‐country study assessing how sustainability disclosure influences RBC crowdfunding success. Using a novel machine learning approach, we objectively classify campaign sustainability orientation, overcoming the subjectivity of traditional keyword‐based methods. Analyzing 1838 Kickstarter campaigns across Europe, we find that sustainability disclosure increases funds raised by 70.4% and success probability by 10%, accounting for several control variables. These results provide empirical evidence that sustainability serves as a quality signal, mitigating information asymmetry and significantly increasing campaign success. Our study advances the entrepreneurial finance literature by demonstrating the positive impact of sustainability disclosure in crowdfunding and introducing a machine learning–based methodology for objective sustainability classification. Beyond theoretical contributions, the findings offer practical implications for entrepreneurs and platform regulators, emphasizing the strategic importance of transparent sustainability communication to ensure crowdfunding success.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.70010

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:34:y:2025:i:7:p:7961-7979

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://onlinelibrary ... 1002/(ISSN)1099-0836

Access Statistics for this article

Business Strategy and the Environment is currently edited by Richard Welford

More articles in Business Strategy and the Environment from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().