Despite the importance of visual images in persuasion, visual effects have not gained needed attention in restaurant startup fundraising literature. Drawing on signaling theory, this study justified restaurant property images as an effective signal of startup quality. Based on service quality literature and entrepreneurship literature, this study further investigated how restaurant property visual signal affects potential backers’ attention and preference for a restaurant startup business. Our preliminary study on cover images of all existing U.S. Kickstarter restaurant projects (2431 projects from 2013 to 2020) shows that entrepreneurs frequently used three major substantive visuals. Results from our experiment indicate that restaurant property visual signal (vs. text only) enhances potential backers’ click-through intention as backers’ service quality expectation (observability) and perceived entrepreneurial effort (cost) are strengthened.

中文翻译：

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餐厅物业图片对潜在支持者点击意愿的影响：来自餐厅众筹的证据


尽管视觉图像在说服中很重要，但视觉效果在餐厅创业筹款文献中并未得到必要的关注。借鉴信号理论，本研究证明了餐厅物业图像是启动质量的有效信号。基于服务质量文献和创业文献，本研究进一步调查了餐厅物业视觉信号如何影响潜在支持者对餐厅创业的关注和偏好。我们对所有现有美国 Kickstarter 餐厅项目（2013 年至 2020 年的 2431 个项目）的封面图片的初步研究表明，创业者经常使用三个主要的实质性视觉效果。我们的实验结果表明，随着支持者的服务质量期望（可观察性）和感知的创业努力（成本）得到加强，餐厅物业的视觉信号（与仅文本相比）增强了潜在支持者的点击意愿。