The effect of facial expressions on crowdfunding

Abstract

We analyze how the facial expressions of people participating in loan-based crowdfunding affect their funding performance. Previously, researchers who studied facial expressions had to rely on a small number of pictures because coding pictures required human input, which is costly. In this study, we utilize Google cloud vision API which allows us to detect the facial expressions from the large number of pictures. We examine the effects of people's facial expressions (i.e., joy, sorrow, anger, and surprise) on funding success. The results show that joy and sorrow are significantly correlated with funding success, with the latter exerting greater impact than the former.