投资者经验对在线融资项目融资绩效的影响:未来流行度和项目声望的中介作用

Impact of Investor Experience on Online Financing Project's Financial Performance:Mediating Role of Future Popularity and Reputation

前期投资者影响后续投资者参与意愿。为了分析前期投资者经验对在线融资项目融资绩效的影响机制,以及融资者面对不同经验投资者的参与策略差异,构建了以未来流行度和项目声望为中介变量的模型。依据投资时序,本文以中国投资者真实投资数据为研究对象,观察窗口为2009—2018年,包含602412位投资者对6420个众筹项目的 896407次投资行为。采用数据分析、情感分析和文本挖掘方法,分别以时间序列模型和面板数据模型进行估计。结果表明,前期投资者经验对众筹项目融资绩效具有正面影响,且未来流行度和项目声望在前期投资者经验对融资绩效的影响中起到部分中介作用。经验丰富的投资者具有类似意见领袖的作用,引导后续投资者,提升项目的未来流行度和声望,以此为中介,使项目取得更高的融资绩效。除此之外,融资者的参与策略依赖于前期投资者经验。如果前期投资者具有丰富经验,融资者较少进行项目更新、社交参与和干预有利于融资绩效的提升;而当前期投资者缺乏经验时,融资者在融资过程中需要主动参与社交、讨论和进度更新。本文理论上丰富了对投资者经验的价值挖掘,完善了对在线融资项目融资绩效的影响路径分析,完善了行为科学、决策科学在融资领域的应用;实践上为融资者提供了参与策略指导。

The early investor experience provides the subsequent investors with the judgment basis of project quality,and then determines the behavior mode of crowdfunding financiers and investors.In order to analyze the impact of early investor experience on the financing performance of online financing projects and the differ⁃ences of participation strategies of financiers facing different experienced investors,a model with future popular⁃ity and project reputation as mediate variables is constructed.Thus,the following two key research questions are put forward:(1)How does the early investor experience affect the future popularity,reputation and financ⁃ing performance of the crowdfunding projects?Does future popularity and project reputation play a mediate role in this process?(2)Can entrepreneurs only passively accept the impact of early investor experience?Would some measures be taken to reduce or enhance this impact?The impact of pre-investor's experience on the latestage popularity,future reputation,financial performance and fundraising outcomes of the crowdfunding projects is analyzed based on the chronological order of investor investment,with empirical data.And the model Popularityit=α1+β1a Popularityit-1+β1bExpertiseit-1+β1c Participationit-1×Expertiseit-1+γ1 PTCit+δ1 PCi+εit is employed to estimate the influence of popularity,while Evaluationi=α2+β2aExpertisei1+β2b Participationi1×Expertisei1+γ2 PTCi+δ2 PCi+εi is adopted to measure the impact of reputation.Then,Logit(Statusi)=α3+β3aExpertisei1+β3b Popularityi1+γ3 PTCi+δ3 PCi+εi and Progressi=α4+β4aExpertisei1+β4b Popularityi1+γ4 PTCi+δ4 PCi+εi are built to estimate the financing performance,with success or failure(PledgeResult(1=success))and financing progress(NumProgress)as dependent variable,respectively.The observation window contains 602,412 investors'real investment data from China with 896,407 investment behaviors on 6,420 crowdfunding projects,from 2009 to 2018.Data analysis methods are used to explore investors'investment behavior according to investment time.Data analytics,sentiment analysis,text mining and econometric models are employed to analyze the impact of investor experience on the online financ⁃ing projects from time series model and panel data model.The text mining technology provides a technical approach for such discussion texts,online reviews and update texts,and this kind of discussion and update strategy is related to the experience of previous investors.The results show that the early investor experience has a positive impact on the financing performance of crowdfunding projects,and the future popularity and project reputation play a partial mediate role in the impact of the early investor experience on the financing performance of online financing projects.The results also indicate that experienced investors play a similar role as opinion leaders,guide follow-up investors,help to improve the popularity and reputation of the project in the future,and make the project achieve higher financing performance.Furthermore,in the financing process,the founder does not passively accept the investment,but can participate in the discussion or update the project in a proactive manner.That is,it is found that if the early investors have rich experience,less update and interven⁃tion will help the financing performance to improve;while if the early investors lack experience,the founders need to actively participate in the online discussion and text updates.In addition to the guiding role of previous investor experience in subsequent users,the experience of previous investors has an alternative effect on the social participation and updates.This study enriches the understanding of investor experience and rational cluster behavior,theoretically enriches the understanding of investor experience and improves the application of behavior science and decision science in the field of entrepreneurship;it also provides a participation strategy for entrepreneurs of online financing projects in practice.