The Informational Role of Imagery in Financial Decision Making: A New Approach
77 Pages Posted: 7 Sep 2019 Last revised: 6 Sep 2023
Date Written: August 31, 2019
Abstract
We develop a novel approach to identify characteristics of images that are likely to, and found to, affect investment decisions. We also create new methodologies to quantify these characteristics. We hypothesize and find that our newly developed machine learning-based measure of informativeness—the degree to which the images convey information beyond the content embedded in textual narratives, which we refer to as additivity—has a significant incremental effect on funding beyond other image characteristics. Our exploration of the impact on financing decisions goes beyond existing imagery explorations within this developing research field.
Keywords: Visual characteristics; image informativeness; equity crowdfunding; machine learning, image-text interactions.
JEL Classification: G0
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation