Get the Crypto Crowd Going: Evaluating the Signaling Effect of Motivational Cues on Crowd Involvement.

Numerous blockchain projects employ open-source software development to create innovative solutions in collaboration with the crowd. They rely on the voluntary involvement of OSS developers from the crowd who follow several ideological tenets that shape their motivation. Yet, we lack knowledge on how blockchain projects can address the developers’ motivation to increase the level of crowd involvement. We draw on a unique panel dataset with 1,893 observations to investigate the association between specific intrinsic and extrinsic motivational cues emitted by blockchain project initiators and crowd involvement. Based on signaling theory, we argue that the level of crowd involvement depends on the signal fit of project-initiated motivational cues with the developers’ motivation. We find that higher levels of profit and human interest language relate negatively and higher levels of risk-taking and diversity language relate positively to crowd involvement. Further, our results show that lower quantity of electronic wordof- mouth strengthens these relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]