Psychological and sociological determinants of entrepreneurial intentions and behaviors

Abstract

Research concerned with the personality of entrepreneurs entails an important part of the research into the management of small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurship. This research has added new knowledge about the role of entrepreneurs’ personality characteristics, their family entrepreneurial background, and the local supportive entrepreneurial background in entrepreneurial start-up intentions and behaviors. Hypotheses and a model were developed and verified using structural equation modeling and regression analysis considering data from a sample of entrepreneurs and students. This research revealed that several personality and sociological factors can be important for entrepreneurship when it comes to starting a business. The most important were the Big Five personality factors openness, extraversion, and non-agreeableness and, to a smaller extent, emotional stability (non-neuroticism), and conscientiousness. The second-most important group of factors were the specific motivational characteristics entrepreneurial self-efficacy, internal locus of control, and risk-taking propensity. Sociological factors were much less important than psychological elements for establishing business.

Antecedents of immigrants’ entrepreneurial intention formation process: an empirical study of immigrant entrepreneurs in Canada

“…Moreover, distinct from the models of cultural value dimensions, the cognitive approach enabled us to verify that immigrants perceive cultural distance through a cognitive prism of planned behaviour (Krueger, 2003) that stimulates the feasibility of their entrepreneurship project. In addition, the existing literature lays emphasis on psychological factors such as risk perception (Alferaih, 2017;Antoncic and Antoncic, 2023). By integrating psychological and economic dimensions, our findings advance the contextualized approach in immigrant entrepreneurship and illustrate that the integrative effects of individual and contextual factors is critical for improving the quality of IEI.…”

“…Among the personality traits considered as an antecedent of intention, the notion of risk is of particular importance (Zhao et al, 2021;Salmony and Kanbach, 2022;Antoncic and Antoncic, 2023). Risk is defined as the probability of a substantial financial loss, but the same dollar amount of possible loss could be more severe for one entrepreneur than another (Sonfield and Lussier, 2000).…”

“…Generally, risk perception has been conceptualized as an assessment of risk by the decision-maker in a given situation (Mullins and Forlani, 2005). It is perceived as a determinant of risky behaviour and entrepreneurial decision-making (Fayolle et al, 2008;Antoncic and Antoncic, 2023). Despite the importance of risk on entrepreneurial intention, relatively few studies have addressed this issue (Nabi and Liñán, 2013).…”

“…Turkina and Thai (2013) define social network as a set of actors (individuals and organisations) and their links. Both "social and cultural factors may be important in the creation of entrepreneurial events and are most felt in the establishing of individual values systems" (Antoncic and Antoncic, 2023). Generally, an entrepreneur considers his entrepreneurial social network to be a medium through which he may gain access to different resources.…”

Sustainable entrepreneurship out of entrepreneurial opportunity identification: The mediating role of psychological capital

“…As a main driver of socioeconomic growth, innovation, employment, and tackling poverty (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000 ; Abdelwahed, 2022 ; Zhang et al, 2022 ), theoretically and practically, entrepreneurship has become an important issue to be dealt with. Previous studies highlighted that intentions are seen as a key factor in predicting potential entrepreneurs' decisions (Schlaegel and Koenig, 2013 ; Donaldson, 2019 ; Antončič and Auer Antončič, 2023 ; Yang et al, 2023 ). On the possibility of shaping entrepreneurial intention (EI), university students are considered the most potential groups; thus, it is not surprising that governments from all over the world now have been offering entrepreneurial education courses to increase university students' EI (Pandit et al, 2018 ; Al-Harasi et al, 2021 ; Luo et al, 2022 ; Soomro and Shah, 2022 ; Wang et al, 2022 ).…”