The Impact of Experts’ Voting on the Fundraising Performance of Crowdfunding Projects

Crowdfunding offers an effective means of gathering small amounts of funds from a substantial number of backers. This study seeks to examine the impact of the experts’ voting and comments on the fundraising performance of crowdfunding projects. Utilizing data from 7358 crowdfunding projects and employing the Heckman model, our study indicates that crowds often tend to align with expert evaluations, perhaps driven by the herding effect and the expert endorsement mechanism. Moreover, the comments from experts in the voting process have the potential to mitigate information asymmetry issues. Lastly, we also found that the impact of expert evaluations varies across project categories. The findings provide important managerial implications. Firstly, fundraisers should closely monitor the votes and evaluations of experts as these factors can influence the behavior of crowdfunding investors. Secondly, platform administrator should actively invite more experts to participate in the review process as it can help to disclose more information, assisting investors in making better investment decisions.