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[2602.15698] How to Disclose? Strategic AI Disclosure in Crowdfunding
Summary
The article examines the impact of strategic AI disclosure in crowdfunding, revealing that mandatory disclosure can significantly reduce funding success, influenced by the disclosure strategy used.
Why It Matters
As AI becomes integral to crowdfunding, understanding how disclosure affects investor behavior is crucial for entrepreneurs and platforms. This research highlights the importance of strategic communication in maintaining investor confidence and optimizing funding outcomes.
Key Takeaways
- Mandatory AI disclosure can decrease crowdfunding performance by nearly 40%.
- Disclosure strategy significantly moderates the negative effects of AI involvement.
- High authenticity and explicitness in disclosure can mitigate adverse outcomes.
- Excessive positive emotional tone in communication may backfire.
- Understanding investor perceptions is key to effective AI transparency.
Computer Science > Human-Computer Interaction arXiv:2602.15698 (cs) [Submitted on 17 Feb 2026] Title:How to Disclose? Strategic AI Disclosure in Crowdfunding Authors:Ning Wang, Chen Liang View a PDF of the paper titled How to Disclose? Strategic AI Disclosure in Crowdfunding, by Ning Wang and Chen Liang View PDF Abstract:As artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly integrates into crowdfunding practices, strategic disclosure of AI involvement has become critical. Yet, empirical insights into how different disclosure strategies influence investor decisions remain limited. Drawing on signaling theory and Aristotle's rhetorical framework, we examine how mandatory AI disclosure affects crowdfunding performance and how substantive signals (degree of AI involvement) and rhetorical signals (logos/explicitness, ethos/authenticity, pathos/emotional tone) moderate these effects. Leveraging Kickstarter's mandatory AI disclosure policy as a natural experiment and four supplementary online experiments, we find that mandatory AI disclosure significantly reduces crowdfunding performance: funds raised decline by 39.8% and backer counts by 23.9% for AI-involved projects. However, this adverse effect is systematically moderated by disclosure strategy. Greater AI involvement amplifies the negative effects of AI disclosure, while high authenticity and high explicitness mitigate them. Interestingly, excessive positive emotional tone (a strategy creators might intuitively adopt to counteract AI...
