Women Entrepreneurs Who Break through in Reward-Based Crowdfunding: The Influence of Entrepreneurial Orientation

Abstract

Based upon social identity theory, having a strategic entrepreneurial orientation is crucial for ventures seeking funding, since entrepreneurial orientation (viewed as an entrepreneurial organizational culture) has a significant influence on investors’ decision-making for resource allocation. However, the attitude of investors toward women entrepreneurs’ behavioral orientation is controversial. Women entrepreneurs may not benefit from specific behavioral orientations because of gender bias. In this study, we had a sample of 5105 ‘design and technology’ campaigns with explicit gender information on Kickstarter, utilizing a computer-aided text analysis dictionary of entrepreneurial orientation to examine whether the five dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation signals affected the relationship between women entrepreneurs and their performance in reward-based crowdfunding. Our findings demonstrated that investors tended to support women entrepreneurs who displayed many of the signals for autonomy and risk-taking, while backers were skeptical of women entrepreneurs displaying a high number of the signals for proactiveness. This study will enable an in-depth understanding of the link between investors’ decision-making and women’s entrepreneurial behaviors, in addition to determining which specific entrepreneurial behavior is important for helping women entrepreneurs to obtain funding in the context of reward-based crowdfunding, from a practical perspective.