It’s Not Only What You Say but “How” You Say It: Linguistic Styles and ICOs Success

Eleonora Monaco (), Gianni Onesti, Diogo Cruz and Pierangelo Rosati
Additional contact information
Eleonora Monaco: University of Bologna
Gianni Onesti: Imaging and Clinical Sciences, University “G. d’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara
Diogo Cruz: Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Pierangelo Rosati: Irish Institute of Digital Business, DCU Business School

A chapter in Exploring Innovation in a Digital World, 2021, pp 109-121 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Digital technologies have created new alternative sources of entrepreneurial finance that create significant opportunities for start-ups and entrepreneurs. Among them, Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) have attracted significant attention from the start-up community and from investors. Despite all the hype around ICOs and the growing number of new token offerings being launched on a daily basis, little is known about the characteristics of successful ICOs. This study aims to fill this gap in the literature by exploring whether and how the linguistic styles adopted in the white paper affects the success of an ICO as measured by the actual amount raised by the offering. Our results are based on a primary dataset of 131 ICOs completed between June 2017 and October 2018. Our results suggest that the use of precise language is positively associated with the amount funded while the use of a concrete language and more numerical terms is negatively associated with the amount funded. This study contributes to the growing literature on ICOs by providing novel insights into the role of the communication strategy adopted by token issuers.

Keywords: Initial coin offerings; ICOs; Entrepreneurial finance; Linguistic styles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:lnichp:978-3-030-87842-9_9

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030878429

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-87842-9_9

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organization from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().