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Crowdfunding has revolutionized entrepreneurial finance by providing a platform for entrepreneurs to raise capital directly from the public. Among various types of crowdfunding platform reward-based crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, where backers receive non-financial rewards in return for their support, are among the most popular choices by entrepreneurs. Specifically, Kickstarter has emerged a sone of the most prominent crowdfunding platforms, hosting over 652,000 Projects and facilitating $8.5 billion in pledges since its inception in 2009 [1].

Due to its rising popularity and importance, may aspects of Kickstarter’s campaign have been studied extensively. Over 48,000 Kickstarter campaigns and found that projects with realistic funding goals, shorter durations, and more frequent updates were more likely to succeed [2].

More recently, with the increasing accessibility of multimedia, recent Kickstarter campaigns now prominently feature pitch videos on their campaign performance. For instance, over 327,000 Kickstarter campaigns and found that successful ones used more images, videos, and interactive media than unsuccessful ones [3].

We asked 347 participants to rate 17 pitch videos randomly selected on Kickstarter site in January. We found that Hook and Problem Statement, and Voiceover are the three most critical elements, that influence a backer’s decision to donate. Dividing Hook into Grab Attention – the ability to grab a viewer’s attention immediately – and Maintain Interest – the ability to maintain a viewer’s interest for the duration of the pitch video, we found that most of the relationship between Hook and a backer’s decision to donate is explained by Maintain Interest. Similarly, most of the relationship between Problem Statement and Donation is explained by Resonate, which captures how much a backer resonates with the stated problem in the pitch video.

With respect to the role of trust, through a series of analysis, we found that trust mediates and moderates the relationship mentioned above.

Our study advances the literature on multimedia and crowdfunding success in several important ways. First, we provide the first detailed examination of how a wide range of micro-level pitch elements(e.g., Hook, Problem Statement) and production features(e.g., Voiceover, Background Music) jointly influence backers’ donation decisions. Prior research largely emphasized the presence or quantity of media or assessed overall audiovisual quality at a broad level. by integrating both narrative and technical dimensions, our work bridges the multimedia design and crowdfunding literatures, offering a more unanced understanding of how entrepreneurs can strategically craft persuasive pitch videos. Second, we contribute theoretically by identifying trust as the psychological mechanism that explains how and why these video elements shape backer behavior.

Aspiring entrepreneurs can also find pricatical implications in our paper. Since many entrepreneurs often struggle with how to put together a pitch video, left along a good one, our paper provides a simple guide to successful pitch video that focuses on Hook, Problem Statement, and Voiceover.

Our limitation of our study is its reliance on evaluations from undergraduate student participants. However, this design is necessary to create a controlled environment to isolate the effects of the pitch video itself and donations without the interferences from campaign-level factors such as reward structure, social proof, or prior funding momentum. Furthermore, because our survey participants specialize in entrepreneurship and digital media, they not only are very familiar with Kickstarter but also represent informed evaluators capable of discerning differences in video quality, narrative coherence, and trust signals. Nevertheless, we recognize that these participants are not identical to typical Kickstarter backers, and therefore our finding should be interpreted as exploratory evidence of mechanism rather than direct predictions of real-world behavior.

Early research on crowdfunding focused on the role of campaign structure in its performance. It was examined technology campaigns and found that lower funding goals and carefully timed durations increase campaign performance [4]. Fleischmann analyzed over 327,000 Kickstarter campaigns and found that successful ones used more images, videos, and interactive media than unsuccessful ones. Their study suggests that the format and delivery of content can influence cognitive and emotional engagement. Zavilichovsky et al. argued that visual cues, such as the entrepreneur’s personal appearance in videos, help bridge trust gaps and reduce perceived risk [5].

Beyond structure, an emerging literature explores the effect of multimedia on campaign performance. For instance, several studies found that campaigns with videos are significantly more likely to succeeds, suggesting that audiovisual elements convey professionalism and ligitimacy [2]. Carradini and Fleischmann analyzed over 327,000 Kickstarter campaigns and found that successful ones used more images, videos, and interactive media than unsuccessful ones. Their study suggests that the format and delivery of content can influence cognitive and emotional engagement [6]. Xu et al. found that technical aspects such as lighting and audio quality significantly impact perceived credibility and trustworthiness [7]. And Zavilichovsky et al. argued that visual cues, such as the entrepreneur’s personal appearance in videos, help bridge trust gaps and reduce perceived risk [5].

Our study extends based on literature reviews. First, we include in our analysis various pitch elements that are relevant to the field of entrepreneurship such as hook, problem statement, product demo, value proposition, and call to action. Furthermore, we also include several design production elements that are prominent in the field of digital media design such as visual appeal, lighting, color grading, voiceover, and background music. Second, we study how to trust mediates and moderates the relationship between pitch elements, production elements, and donations. We thus offer a theoretically grounded psychological mechanism through which pitch video affect donation behavior.

Our paper extends the literature on the effect of multimedia on campaign success in several ways. First, we are the first to examine in detail the relationship between a wide range of micro-level pitch elements (Hook, Problem Statement etc.), video elements(Voiceover, Background Music, etc.), and a baker’s decision to donate. Earlier studies primarily focused on just the presence or quantity of media or on broad audiovisual quality. This dual focus bridges the multimedia design and crowdfunding literature, offering a finer-grained understanding of how creators can strategically design persuasive pitch videos. Second, we are also the first to study the role of trust in explaining the underlying relationship. Thus, we offer a theoretically grounded mechanism through which pitch video influences a backer’s decision to donate.

This study centers around he signaling theory. signaling theory addresses how parties with more information convey credible signals to less-informed parties in settings characterized by information asymmetry [8]. In crowdfunding, information asymmetry stems from the fact that project creators know more about their abilities, intentions, and the feasibility of their ventures than backers do. As the result, to reduce information asymmetry, potential backers rely on a variety of observable signals such as campaign presentation, clarity of goals, and the presence of a well-crafted video, among others to assess the feasibility of the ventures.

Our study expands on this by focusing on micro-level signals embedded in the pitch video in various pitch elements, and production elements. We hypothesize that these elements signal the entrepreneur's competence, authenticity, and preparation that affect the backer’s willingness to support the campaign.

Hypothesis 1: Various elements of a pitch video (e.g., Hook, Problem Statement, Voiceover) are positively correlated with donations. It is the case because quality content serves as a signal of preparation and professionalism [9].

Hypothesis 2: Trust mediates the relationship between elements of a video pitch and a backer’s decision to donate. Pitch elements such as a compeling hook or a resonating problem statement may foster trust, which in turn increases donation [10].

Hypothesis 3: Trust mediates the relationship between elements of a video pitch and a backer’s decision to donate, such that the relationship is stronger at higher levels of trust. The inclusion of various pitch elements becomes more persuasive and impactful when the viewer already perceives the entrepreneur as trustworthy. Furthermore, non-content cues like voiceover become more effective when reinforced by a strong trust baseline [9].

We randomly selected 17 Kickstarter campaigns that were launched in January 2025. These campaigns are classified under the Design category. We chose the design category for two reasons. First, it is one of the most popular categories on Kickstarter in terms of donation amount. Second, unlike other categories, projects under the design categories are quite diverse including fashion, furniture, household items, etc. We believe our survey participants are more interested in and can resonate with these campaigns better than campaigns under other categories. In addition, we only include campaign that have pitch videos and were not canceled prior to their conclusions.

These pitch videos were then shown to different groups of entrepreneurship students and digital media design students. Each group of participants watched only on video at a time. Immediately after watching the videos, the participants were asked to complete a survey that consisted of 31 questions Table 1. These questions ask for their perceptions of the pitch videos on their pitch elements and production elements. We ask questions like: “Did the opening of the pitch immediately grab your attention?” and “How clear was the call to action?” to assess the pitch elements. To assess the production elements, we ask: “Did the lighting enhance your experience watching the pitch?” and “How did the speaker or voiceover effectively convey enthusiasm or passion for the product?”. To measure donation and trust, we ask the following questions: “How much money would you donate to this business” and “Did the pitch’s overall quality make you trust the product/business?”. The participants answer each of the survey questions on a scale from 0 to 5, with 0 means such element does not exist at all and 5 means the element is strongly effective. In total, we received 349 responses, averaging 20 responses per pitch video.

It is important to mention that our survey participants consisted of undergraduate students majoring in entrepreneurship and digital media programs. These participants were selected because their combined expertise allowed for a balanced assessment of both narrative and technical aspects of pitch videos. Furthermore, using a student sample provided a high-control setting that isolated the persuasive effect of video content without confounding campaign-level factors such as reward structure, social proof, or prior funding momentum. This approach aligns with previous persuasion and signaling research that employed student evaluator to examine message quality and trust formation.

Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics. On average, our participants donated about $46 per campaign. With respect to trust, we use three separate questions to measure trust. As shown in Table 2, all three measures, Trust, Confidence, and Genuine, have similar average ratings at around 3.1~3.2. Regarding the pitch elements, it shows that the value proposition has the lowest average quality with an average rating of 2.4 out of 5. Meanwhile, the ability to present a resonating problem statement has the highest average quality at 3.6 out of 5. Meanwhile, the ability to present a resonating problem statement has highest average quality at 3.6 out of 5. And finally, our participants think the overall video quality is higher than the overall audio quality.

Our analysis is divided into two parts. In the first part, we examine the relationship between pitch elements, trust, and donations. We then examine the relationship between production elements, trust, and donations in the second section.

1) Pitch Elements, Trust, Donation: To examine the relationship between pitch elements and donations, we run the following regression equations.

where i is the number of responses.

We use three measures of donation: Donation Dummy measuring the likelihood of donating; Donation Amount measuring the actual donated amount and Donation Influence measuring whether donation decision is affected by the overall pitch video quality.

We used five pitch elements in our analysis: Hook, Problem Statement, Product Demo, Value Proposition, and Call to Action. We then further divide Hook into Grab Attention, which captures how the pitch video grabs viewer attention immediately, and Maintain Interest, which captures how the pitch video keeps the viewers interested from the beginning to the end of the video. Similarly, we divide Problem Statement into Problem Articulation, how well the pitch video articulates the problem and resonate, how does the viewers resonate with the problem itself.

We include several control variables including study major(entrepreneurship vs. digital media design), year of study(freshman, sophomore, etc.), knowledge of Kickstarter(Yes vs.No), and GPA(0 to 4) to control for survey participant’s characteristics.

As shown in Table 3, among the five pitch elements, only Hook and Problem Statement show a positive and statistically significant relationship in all measures of donation. As shown in Column 1, a one-point increase in Hook (out of 5-point scale) increases the likelihood of donating by 11.8%. Similarly, a one-point increase in Problem Statement (out of a 5-point scale). Interestingly, value proposition has negative relationship with donations. However, the relationship it not consistently significant across all models.

To investigate Hook and Problem Statement in greater details, we decompost Hook into Grab Attention and Maintain Interest. While Grab Attention captures whether a video pitch’s ability to draw immediate attention, Maintain Interest captures its ability to maintain the viewer’s interest throughout the entire video pitch. Table 4 shows that only the coefficient on Maintain Interest is positively and statistically significant, suggesting that maintaining a viewer’s interest throughout the video pitch plays a more important role than establishing an initial hook.

Similarly, we decompose Problem Statement into Problem Articulation and Resonate. Problem Articulation centers on the video pitch’s ability to articulate the problem well. And problem presented in the video pitch. It shows that Resonate has a positive and statistically significant relationship with donation. This suggests that at the end of the day, viewers are more likely to donate to the problems that feel true to them. Together, these results provide some support to Hypothesis 1.

2) We now turn our attention to the role of trust, As discussed previously, we hypothesize that trust plays not only a mediation role but also a moderator role.

where i is the number of responses.

If trust mediates the relationship between pitch elements and donations, then by including trust in the regression as captured by the regression coefficients should either become smaller in scale (partial mediation role) or become statistically insignificant (full mediation role). Since only Hook and Problem Statement show statistical significance previously, we focus on their relationship with donation when examining trust’s role as a mediator.

As shown in Table 5 across all models, the relationship between Hook, Problem Statement and Donations mostly remains statistically significant but becomes smaller in scale. For example, Column 1 shows that the relationship between Hook and Donation is 0.0888, which is 24.75% lower than the same relationship when Trust is not included in the regression equation as reported in Column 1 of Table 3. This result suggests that Trust plays a partial role as a mediator for the relationship between pitch elements and donations. This partially supports Hypothesis 2.

3) With respect to its role as a Moderator, we run the following regressions.

where i is the number of responses.

If Trust moderates the relationship between pitch elements and donation then the iteration terms between pitch elements and trust should be statistically significant. As shown in Table 6, We find weak evidence that trust moderates the relationship between hook and donations (Columns 1-5). However, we find strong evidence that trust moderates the relationship between problem statement and donations (Columns 6-10). This partially supports Hypothesis 3.

4) Production Elements, Trust, and Donation; To examine the relationship between production elements and donations, we run the following regression equations.

where i is the number of responses.

As mentioned previously, we use three measures of donations: Donation Dummy measuring the likelihood of donating; Donation Amount measuring the actual donated amount; and Donation Influence measuring whether donation decision is affected by the overall pitch video quality.

We have two board measures of production elements: Overall Video Quality and Overall Audio Quality. As shown in Table 7, only the Overall Audio Quality shows a positive and statistically significant relationship with donations. A one-point increase in Overall Audio Quality (out of 5-point scale) increases the likelihood of donations by 6.79%. We then decompose the Overall Video Quality into three elements: Visual Appeal, Lighting, and Color Grading. Similarly, we decompose the Overall Audio Quality into two elements: Voiceover and background Music. As shown in [Table 8], though not robust, Voiceover is positively correlated to Donations. All in all, these results provide a weak support to Hypothesis 1.

An unexpected finding is that visual quality indicators – such as lighting, color grading, or overall visual appeal – did not exert statistically significant effects on donation intentions. We interpret this in two ways. First, the results suggest that narrative coherence and perceived authenticity may outweigh cinematic polish in shaping trust and willingness to donate. This interpretation is consistent with the elaboration likelihood model, which posits that when viewers engage deeply with message content, peripheral aesthetic cues become less influential [9]. Second, it is possible that our participants, being design-trained students, apply higher baseline standards for visual quality, thus reducing variance in their evaluations. These explanations point to a potentially nonlinear relationship between visual sophistication and persuation – an avenue that future research could explore using broader, more heterogeneous samples.

5) We now turn our attention to the role of trust. To examine its role as a moderator, we run the following regression

where i is the number of responses.

If Trust mediates the relationship between production elements and donations, then by including trust in the regression analysis, the relationship between production elements and donations as captured by the regression coefficients should either become smaller in scale (partial mediation role) or become statistically insignificant (full mediation role). However, since neither Overall Video Quality nor Overall Audio Quality show a robust relationship with donations in the first place, we will pay more attention to the scale of the coefficients.

As shown in Table 9, across different models, the relationship between Overall Video Quality, overall Audio Quality and Donations becomes smaller in scale. For instance, Colum 1 shows that the relationship between Overall Audio Quality and donation becomes 0.0205 from 0.0679. It is a 69.8% reduction in scale. This result suggests that trust plays a partial role in mediating the relationship between production elements and donations. This partially supports Hypothesis 2.

6) With respect to its role as Moderator, we run the following regression.

where i is the number of responses.

If trust moderates the relationship between production elements and donations then the interaction terms between production elements and trust should be statistically significant. As shown in Table 10, the interaction terms are only statistically significant in 2 out of 10 models. As a result, we find very weak evidence to support Hypothesis 3.

Kickstarter has become one of the most popular fundraising options for early-stage ventures. Due to its rising popularity and importance, many aspects of Kickstarter’s campaign have been studied extensively.

In this paper, we take a deeper look into the role of pitch video quality and crowdfunding performance. Specifically, we ask how various pitch elements – the hook, the problem statement, product demo, value proposition, and call to action – and various production elements – visual appealing, lighting, color grading, voiceover, background music, transition and cut – affect a viewers’ willingness to donate to a Kickstarter campaign.

Analyzing a survey data collected from 347 participants, we found several interesting results. First, we found that Hook and Problem Statement, and Voiceover are the three most critical elements that influence a backer’s decision to donate. Further examination shows that Grab Attention and Maintain nterest are the main driver behind the relationship between Hook and Donations and Problem Statement and donations respectively. With respect to the role of trust, through a series of analysis, we found that trust mediates and moderates the relationship mentioned above.

Our paper extends the literature on the effect of multimedia design on campaign success in several ways. First, we are the first to examine in detail the relationship between a wide range of elements of a video pitch with a backer’s decision to donate. Second, we are also the first to study the role of trust in explaining the underlying relationship. Thus, we offer theoretically grounded mechanism through which pitch video influences a backer’s decision to donate. We also like to point out that although Kickstarter pitch videos are used in our study, our results can be applied to all pitch videos that are featured on other popular crowdfunding platforms such as Indiegogo, Go Fund Me, and non-crowdfunding platforms such as Youtube and TikTok.

Aspiring entrepreneurs can also find practical implications in our paper. Since many entrepreneurs often struggle with how to put together a pitch video, left along a good one, our paper provides a simple guide to a successful pitch video that focuses on Hook, Problem Statement, and Voiceover.

There are several important caveats to our study. First, our survey participants were undergraduate students rather than actual Kickstarter backers. Although this sample provided a controlled and informed evaluation context, the findings should be viewed as exploratory evidence rather than causal inference about real-world crowdfunding behavior. Future studies can enhance external validity by replicating our design with diverse backer populations or through field experiments involving live campaigns.

Second, our analysis focused on a subset of pitch-video and production elements; future research could include additional narrative, emotional, or AI-generated features to test their influence on trust and donation behavior. Finally, with our regression models establish consistent associations, establishing causality would require longitudinal or experimental methods. We see this study as a foundational step towards a richer understanding of how visual storytelling and trust jointly drive success in digital crowdfunding. Nevertheless, our paper serves as a first exploratory step towards an important area of research that would benefit crowdfunding community, both practitioners and researchers.