WHO IS AFRAID TO FOUND? THE INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUAL ATTRIBUTES ON THE PERCEIVED FEAR OF ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITY

Abstract

Research shows that many potential entrepreneurs refrain from founding a company due to fear (Welpe et al. 2012; Kelley et al. 2011; Brixy et al. 2011). This study investigates the amount of fear of potential entrepreneurs and its connection to the personal attributes of the individual. The study bases on a quantitative survey with 572 participants selected from entrepreneurial environments in Germany in 2013. The data showed that the survey participants could be divided with two approximated normal distributions of fear into two groups of rather fearful and rather fearless entrepreneurs. The central assumption that potential entrepreneurs can be clustered according to certain attributes into each of these two groups with different amounts of fear could be tentatively confirmed. The influence of various individual attributes on the fear of founding a company was analyzed using correlation and regression analyses. The two major attributes to determine the amount of fear of an individual proved to be previous leadership experience and the intrinsic motivation to become an entrepreneur. A subsequent discriminant analysis showed that the amount of fear of an individual survey participant could solely be predicted by those two attributes with an accuracy of 71%. The study concludes with highlighting implications of these findings and potential reactions for academia and policy-makers to influence the fear of potential entrepreneurs.