Speaker Profile
Dr. JIANG Han is an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean at the School of Management and Economics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-Shenzhen). He earned his PhD from the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University in 2014. Before joining CUHK-Shenzhen in 2023, he served at the Freeman School of Business at Tulane University, where he held the Irving H. LaValle Chair.
Professor JIANG’s research interests cover social networks, corporate governance, international business, and quantitative research methods. An accomplished scholar, his research has appeared in over a dozen articles in premier journals on the UTD-24 and FT-50 lists. His work has also been supported by a national-level Young Talent program. He demonstrates significant editorial leadership, serving as a Senior Editor for the Asia Pacific Journal of Management and Management and Organization Review, and sitting on the editorial boards of the Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and Journal of Management.
Abstract
It is commonly believed that highlighting their elite educational and professional records, as status signals, could help entrepreneurs better showcase their capabilities and credentials and convince investors, thus contributing to their fundraising success. In this study, however, we demonstrate that such status signaling effort could backfire for entrepreneurs who seek early-stage venture fundings through crowdfunding. We propose that, as a venue for financing, crowdfunding is inherently imprinted with relatively low status. First, crowd funders are generally of much lower financial and professional status than professional venture investors. Moreover, the potential financial support a project could raise through crowdfunding is commonly much lower than traditional venture financing venues. In such a manner, there would be potential dissonance between the (former) elite status of entrepreneurs and the mediocre status of the crowdfunding venue. Such status dissonance not only could psychologically distance crowd funders from the entrepreneurs, but may also render the crowd funders casting doubts about the potential and viability of the projects the entrepreneurs are to pitch through the lesser venue, thus discouraging them from backing the local projects. In such a manner, for crowdfunding entrepreneurs, promoting their elite educational and professional background would create such status dissonance, thus hampering their fundraising performance. Evidence from crowdfunding projects posted on Kickstarter between 2018 and 2022 largely supports the above theoretical prediction.
Date/Time: December 23, 2025, 10:00 a.m.
Venue: Room 0411, Teaching Building 0, Jiuliu Campus
