Interactive Information Disclosure as a Gatekeeper: Examining the Effect of Investor Panels on Equity Crowdfunding
研究股权众筹平台上的投资者面板（一种互动信息披露机制）如何影响初创企业的融资表现，发现该面板会降低融资成功率，尤其在缺乏领投人的项目中影响更显著。
Equity crowdfunding has become an increasingly popular financial source for startups. However, most equity crowdfunding investors are nonprofessionals and thus inexperienced. To help inexperienced investors fund startups, which are high risk, equity crowdfunding platforms have designed various effective information disclosure mechanisms to protect investors and improve market efficiency. One such mechanism is the investor panel, which is a novel form of interactive information disclosure for investors. We exploit a natural experiment on a leading equity crowdfunding platform to understand the effectiveness of its investor panel feature in the fundraising performance of startups and analyze the effect of its lead investor feature. Results indicate that investor panels can harm fundraising performance. The hindering effect of investor panels is more salient in campaigns without a lead investor than in campaigns with a lead investor. To further uncover the underlying mechanisms, we perform text mining analysis on comments from investors. The results of the analysis reveal that potential investors posted few and negative comments after the launch of the investor panel feature. Our study contributes to the information disclosure research stream of the crowdfunding literature by determining the nuanced effect of interactive information disclosure. Moreover, our study provides practical implications to crowdfunding entrepreneurs and platforms for campaign information management.