The Regional Distribution and Correlates of an Entrepreneurship-Prone Personality Profile in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom: A Socioecological Perspective

Abstract

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Entrepreneurial role models, fear of failure, and institutional approval of entrepreneurship: a tale of two regions

“…Empirical evidence shows that East Germans have a higher level of state-reliance when compared to West Germans (e.g., Alesina and Fuchs-Schuendeln, 2007), which feeds back into lower preferences for entrepreneurship among Easterners (Bauernschuster et al, 2012;Runst, 2013). Furthermore, Obschonka et al (2013) find that the Big Five personality characteristics differ between West and East Germans whereby the latter are less likely to have an entrepreneurial personality profile. These findings might be explained to a large degree by anti-capitalist indoctrination in socialism, leading to the formation of norms and values that are at odds with entrepreneurship (e.g., Earle and Sakova, 2000;Schwartz and Bardi, 1997;Smallbone and Welter, 2001).…”

Divided we stand: Three psychological regions of the United States and their political, economic, social, and health correlates.

“…Specifically, using the state-level personality scores published by Rentfrow and colleagues (2008), studies have shown that state-level personality scores are related to health and morbidity (McCann, 2010a(McCann, , 2010b(McCann, , 2011bPesta, Bertsch, McDaniel, Mahoney, & Poznanski, 2012;Voracek, 2009), psychological well-being (McCann, 2011aPesta, McDaniel, & Bertsch, 2010;Rentfrow, Mellander, & Florida, 2009), social capital (Rentfrow, 2010, creative capital (Florida, 2008), income inequality (de Vries, Gosling, & Potter, 2011), entrepreneurship rates (Obschonka, Schmitt-Rodermund, Silbereisen, Gosling, & Potter, 2013), political values (Rentfrow, Jost, Gosling, & Potter, 2009), and regional stereotypes (Rogers & Wood, 2010). These findings suggest that the personality traits that are common in a state are linked to an assortment of important indicators that delineate different regions of the United States.…”

The influence of entrepreneurs’ social referents on start-up size

“…This paper places emphasis on one particular element: the size of businesses already in the region where the entrepreneur resides. However, other elements, such as financial capital and the market structure (Colombo and Grilli 2005;Mata 1996), the presence of role models (Bosma et al 2012), the economic context, and an entrepreneurial culture (Stuetzer et al 2014), or even the distribution of personality traits (Obschonka et al 2013) also matter. Lack of consideration of these regional-level idiosyncrasies may lead to inefficient or erroneous policies (McCann and OrtegaArgilés 2016).…”