Abstract
his work analyzes the importance of personal values in equity crowdfunding investment choice. Employing a theoretical framework borrowing theories from the fields of finance, marketing, and psychology, our model proposes several antecedents for investment choice and focuses on the congruence between the investor's personal values and the values promoted by the startup during its fundraising campaign. The results of our laboratory experiment, based on real-life campaign material, suggest that the investor's personal values and interest in the project are more important than the perceived signal quality of the project in explaining the decision to invest. Furthermore, two opposed values emerge from the study-"Universalism" and "Power"-in line with the typical two-way classification of SRI investors into value-based and value-seeking investor groups.