The manuscript investigates whether the individual personality trait, Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)—typically considered negative—influences the willingness of individuals to contribute to Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), a phenomenon that emerged after the blockchain revolution. We conducted both qualitative and quantitative work in this space and present the results of an international survey, including a conjoint experiment. Theoretically, we anchor our study in signaling theory and propose that signal valence (the positive or negative interpretation of a signal) can diverge from signal intent. Specifically, we find that candidate ICO funders with strong FOMO behave predictably irrationally. They are more likely to invest in financially irresponsible projects and are less likely to invest in projects that have received recognition from established media sources or multinationals. While both financial responsibility and stakeholder recognition are ostensibly positive signals of team and project quality, we find that for ICO funders with high FOMO, the valence of these signals changes.

This article examines how a firm's willingness to make trade-offs that favour sustainability over commercial goals attenuates the relationship between firm-level sustainability orientation and subsequent performance. The hypothesis development draws on stakeholder theory and the literature on mission and revenue drifts, while the empirical analysis is based on two waves of original survey data on Finnish manufacturing SMEs. We find that sustainability orientation is positively associated with performance only when the willingness to make sustainability trade-offs is low, whereas the relationship becomes negative when the willingness to make such trade-offs is high. Our findings thus suggest that the popular adage of doing well by doing good might only hold if doing good does not conflict with business interests. The results add to stakeholder theory by showing how conforming to stakeholder expectations can be good for business – but only if doing so does not seriously compromise the pursuit of profits.