Informational and emotional appeals of cover image in crowdfunding platforms and the moderating role of campaign outputs

The first-stage decision is critical in the decision process in crowdfunding, where the cover image plays an important role in forming first impressions and persuading click funders. This study explores how emotional visual cues (human face) and informational visual cues (visual text) in the cover image affect funders' decisions and how the effects differ across campaigns. The results demonstrate the great persuasive power of human faces and visual text. We further illustrate the effects of joyful expressions and image-text congruency as well as the non-significant influence of the length and polarity of visual text. Moreover, emotional visual cues are more effective in intangible product campaigns, while informational visual cues are more effective in tangible product campaigns, and both are important in social service campaigns. Valuable insight is provided to creators about the design of the cover image.