Risk disclosure and entrepreneurial resource acquisition in crowdfunding digital platforms: Evidence from digital technology ventures

The widespread development of digital technology facilitates the emergence of new entrepreneurial modes, of which crowdfunding digital platforms are one. In the digital environment of crowdfunding platforms, digital entrepreneurs can obtain the essential resources necessary for their startups' rapid and cost-effcient development. However, the information asymmetry derived from the digital nature of crowdfunding platforms leads to a lower chance of success for entrepreneurial ventures in this market, especially those in digital technology, limiting the important role that crowdfunding platforms can play in digital entrepreneurship. To this end, we focus on the risk disclosure section introduced by crowdfunding platforms to alleviate information asymmetry and explore the influence mechanism of the content of risk disclosure on entrepreneurial resource acquisition in crowdfunding digital platforms. By employing a novel text mining technique structural topic modelling, we analyse the risk disclosure texts of 4,284 digital technology crowdfunding projects and successfully identify various factors that constrain the development of digital technology ventures in crowdfunding platforms. Furthermore, we find that the risk topics digital entrepreneurs disclose negatively affect entrepreneurial resource acquisition. However, this relationship is moderated by the reward structure setting in the context of rewardbased crowdfunding. The findings of this study not only enrich the literature on crowdfunding and digital entrepreneurship but also provide valuable practical implications on how crowdfunding digital platforms can be used to promote the development of digital entrepreneurship.