Too Emotional to Succeed: Entrepreneurial Storytelling in a Prosocial Setting

In a prosocial crowdfunding setting, the ability of entrepreneurs to mobilize support through their stories is crucial since their livelihoods often depend on it. We examine how cognitive and emotional appeals in stories affect resource mobilization outcomes in a sample of 2098 entrepreneurs in 55 countries who requested a loan via a prosocial crowdfunding platform. Our study suggests that using analytical language in entrepreneur stories mobilizes support attracting more resources and using affective language in entrepreneur stories is detrimental attracting less resources, especially in the case of negative emotions. Our study contributes to the entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship literatures by showing the effectiveness of cognitive and emotional appeals –distinguishing between positive and negative emotions– in mobilizing support in a context that combines aspects of traditional crowdfunding and social entrepreneurship.