Platform-Provided Disclosure on Investor Base and Entrepreneurial Success: Evidence from Crowdfunding

Abstract

We employ a sharp regression discontinuity design to identify the causal effects of investor-base disclosure (IB DISCLOSE) on funding outcomes and entrepreneurship success. Since February 2016, Kickstarter has disclosed IB information, namely, backer statistics including geographic locations and previous funding experience of the backers, once the number of backers for a project reaches ten. Exploiting this discontinuity, we show the disclosure increases the likelihood of funding success by 10 percent and the amount of funds pledged by 13 percent. The effect is more pronounced when the project quality is high and for projects with less credible creators, high ex ante uncertainty, high information asymmetry between creators and backers, and high financial costs to backers. We also find IB DISCLOSE increases the likelihood of product delivery. Our study highlights the importance of platform-provided disclosure in improving the efficiency of capital allocation.