Sustainability signals, board structure and equity crowdfunding success: a knowledge management perspective

Purpose This study aims to investigate whether project sustainability functions as a credible trust signal increasing the likelihood of success in equity crowdfunding (ECF) campaigns, and whether the Board of Directors mediates this relationship by legitimizing sustainability knowledge toward external investors. Design/methodology/approach The empirical analysis draws on 203 campaigns launched on the CrowdFundMe platform in Italy between 2016 and 2024. Binary logistic regression tests the direct association between project sustainability and campaign success, controlling for professional investor presence, governance structure, team size and campaign-level financial parameters. Mediation analysis following Baron and Kenny (1986), complemented by 5,000-replication bootstrap confidence intervals, tests the mediating role of board structure. The study integrates signaling theory with social capital and knowledge management frameworks. Findings Project sustainability is positively associated with campaign success, with sustainability-oriented campaigns approximately four times more likely to achieve their funding target. The Board of Directors partially mediates this relationship: sustainability-oriented firms are more likely to adopt structured board governance, which in turn positively predicts campaign success. The indirect effect is statistically significant, with the 95% bootstrap confidence interval excluding zero. Originality/value This study makes three contributions. It provides new evidence on sustainability signaling in the Italian ECF market over a long observation window. It integrates signaling theory with social capital and knowledge management perspectives to explain how sustainability generates investor trust. It introduces board structure as a knowledge-legitimizing mediating mechanism, revealing a sequential pathway from sustainability commitment to governance formalization to campaign success that prior literature has not examined.