The Influence Of Cultural Factors Of Startup Entrepreneurs On The Crowdfunding Performance

China's economic and social development has entered a new era.It has shifted from high-speed growth to high-quality development.To promote high-quality development,innovation must be positioned as the first driver.The importance is to optimize the environment for innovation and startups,cultivate creative talents for new businesses,and let innovation playing the main role,making company works as a powerful engine for the high-quality development.In the implementing process of innovation and startup,the widespread Internet technology and Internet financing platform for startups makes the role of new Internet financing(e.g.crowdfunding)increasingly important in supporting startup entrepreneurs to gather funding.At the same time,on the Internet crowdfunding platform,the social network conditions of startup entrepreneurs are facing a new situation,which is completely different as before.The Internet crowdfunding platform is aimed at the most untargeted,small and medium-sized investors.Therefore,startups have turned from offline,small-scaled,and closed social network to large-scaled,unspecified,internationalized and diversely cultural network relationships(investors).In the change of social network characteristics,the impact of startups' and investors' culture on the result of crowdfunding has also changed significantly.On one hand,the same as offline startups,the cultural factors affect startups choices,business models,team building,and management methods.All of these will further affect the performances of startups,and thus affect the result of their crowdfunding.On the other hand,investors participated in the Internet crowdfunding,often merely rely on the information that released by the platform to understand the features of startups.However,the Internet crowdfunding platform publishes limited information about the startup entrepreneurs,such gender,nationality,and some cultural background(namely,only cultural factor related information is released).Nevertheless,it is still the important channel for startup entrepreneurs and investors to achieve social identity through homogenous cultural characteristics.In the new situation of the open social network and limited information released by the Internet crowdfunding platform,how the cultural information of the startup entrepreneurs affects their social network,crowdfunding result?What is the influence mechanism?What are the impacts of the cultural factors on the existing social network related theories?They are important issues worthy to be explored.Cultural factors,especially the ones in the context of startup financing research,mainly refer to the factors that the startup entrepreneurs have,that can trigger the different choices,which are made by founders or investors that based on culture.Those factors can influence the business performance of startups.The cultural factors should contain not only the attributes of founders and investors due to culture background,but also the attributes of different social networking effect generated by social cultural identity.Some researchers found that between different genders and regions in modern society,differences in human intelligence and learning ability are not significant.However,the culture differences and social identity have become the main driver in the result of startup financing.Therefore,the first task in this research was analyzing literature in order to identify the representatives of cultural factors of startup entrepreneurs:gender,cultural background,and cultural distance.The overall model and related sub-theoretical models were then established based on the influence of above three cultural factors on the performance of crowdfunding.The main research questions are:1.Based on social embedded theory,whether female startup entrepreneurs still have certain disadvantages in Internet crowdfunding?If they exist,what are the influential factors and mechanism behind them?2.In the condition of diverse cultural differences,what are the impacts of cultural background of new business starters(who come from dfferent countries or regions)on the result of crowdfunding?3.In the context of cross-cultural and cross-regional investment and financing,how does the cultural distance between startup entrepreneurs and investors affect the result of crowdfunding?And what role does social network centrality play in it?To answer the above mentioned questions,data mining technology was used to collect data on financing projects and startup entrepreneurs related information from worldwide famous Internet crowdfunding platforms as the analytical sample.Relevant statistical models and software were used to conduct the examination of research hypotheses.A more detailed robust test was conducted on the proved results.The following research conclusions are drawn on the impact of the above mentioned three cultural factors on the result of crowdfunding and the corresponding boundary conditions:Firstly,the gender disadvantage of startup entrepreneurs still exists under the condition of Internet crowdfunding.The research shows that under the condition of Internet crowdfunding,similar to traditional startup field,female startup entrepreneurs also have financing disadvantages.Compared with male startup entrepreneurs,female founders have lower crowdfunding result.Because it is difficult for female startup entrepreneurs to engage in social embedding.It is even more difficult for them to obtain identity in social networks.In addition,female founders have lower educational levels and fewer business experiences than male founders do.It is also not easy for female founders to utilize social network training and entrepreneurial experience to transfer into crowdfunding result,leading to the disadvantages of female founders in crowdfunding.Correspondingly,female founders can improve their education and business experience to compensate for the disadvantages of crowdfunding result,which caused by the gender factor.Secondly,the national culture background of founders has an important impact on crowdfunding result.The research found that startup entrepreneurs'technical education experience,offline startup experience and successful crowdfunded startup experience contribute to the result of crowdfunding.However,marketing education has no direct impact on crowdfunding result.Furthermore,previous successful startup experience may enlarge their social networks and facilitate them accessing to resources.The cultural uncertainty avoidance has no direct impact on crowdfunding result,and has no adjustment effect on the relation between founders' education and financing result.However,the degree of uncertainty avoidance has a regulatory effect on the startup experience of founders and the result of crowdfunding.Under the culture of low degree of uncertainty avoidance,startup entrepreneurs' online financing and offline startup experience can promote financing success.Thirdly,the cultural distance between founders and investors plays an important role in crowdfunding result.The research concludes that the distance between founders' personal social network and investors' cultural will inhibit the founders' crowdfunding result.In addition,the founders' social network centrality plays an intermediary role in the process,namely the smaller the cultural difference between founders and investors,the more attractive for investors to enter the founders' social networks,thus promoting the social network centralization of founders in the investment circle,achieving higher qualified investment and financing information.This process can help to promote the crowdfunding result.In addition,startup experience has a negative regulatory effect on the process of founders' social network.Furthermore,the investors' cultural distance affects the founders' social network centrality.The startup experience positively affects the founders' social networks' central influence on the crowdfunding result.Based on the above conclusions,the startup entrepreneurs' cultural factors are indispensable in improving the result of crowdfunding.In Internet financing,these factors have a significant impact on the result of crowdfunding for new startup entrepreneurs.Due to the research on the influence of founders' cultural factors on the result of crowdfunding,the following three aspects of innovation have been achieved:First of all,the research reveals the influence mechanism of gender factors on the crowdfunding results under the condition of Internet-based social networks of startup entrepreneurs.It systematically studied the transmission process from the gender of entrepreneurs to the characteristics of their social network members,and to the results of crowdfunding.The research also examined the role of relevant regulatory factors,and established a complete chain of logical analysis.Secondly,it expands the research on the relation between the Internet startup entrepreneurs' social networks and the results of crowdfunding based on national cultural attributes.Under the trend of crow-cultural and cross-regional investment and financing,it explores the uncertainty avoidance of founders due to their countries'or regional culture.It has established a systematic analysis framework on the institutional mechanism of the cultural distance between entrepreneurs and investors,and the social network of entrepreneurs,that affecting the results of crowdfunding.Finally,thanks to the data mining technology based on the regular expression NFA engine,the new methods and functions were used to collect,process,and analyze the data of the Internet crowdfunding platform,and of the associated social media accounts.It gives a new connotation in generating research database from Internet crowdfunding by means of data mining.