Entrepreneurial Regions: Do Macro-Psychological Cultural Characteristics of Regions Help Solve the "Knowledge Paradox" of Economics?

Political Person-Culture Match and Longevity: The Partisanship-Mortality Link Depends on the Cultural Context

Recent studies demonstrate that Republicans live longer than Democrats. We examined whether these longevity benefits are universal or culturally varying. Following a person-culture match perspective, we hypothesized that Republicans' longevity benefits occur in Republican, but not in Democratic, states. To test this argument, we conducted two studies among U.S. adults. In preregistered Study 1, we used large survey data (extended U.S. General Social Survey; N = 42,855). In confirmatory Study 2, we analyzed obituaries/biographies of deceased U.S. political partisans (novel data web-scraped from an online cemetery; N = 9,177). Both studies supported the person-culture match perspective with substantial effect sizes. In Republican contexts, up to 50.1% of all Republicans but only 36.3% of all Democrats reached an age of 80 years. In Democratic contexts, there was no such longevity gap. Robustness tests showed that this effect generalizes to political ideology and holds across spatial levels but is limited to persons with strong political convictions.

The impact of entrepreneurship research on other academic fields

The remarkable ascent of entrepreneurship witnessed as a scientific field over the last 4 decades has been made possible by entrepreneurship's ability to absorb theories, paradigms, and methods from other fields such as economics, psychology, sociology, geography, and even biology. The respectability of entrepreneurship as an academic discipline is now evidenced by many other fields starting to borrow from the entrepreneurship view. In the present paper, seven examples are given from this "pay back" development. These examples were first presented during a seminar at the Erasmus Entrepreneurship Event called what has the entrepreneurship view to offer to other academic fields? This article elaborates on the core ideas of these presentations and focuses on the overarching question of how entrepreneurship research impacts the development of other academic fields. We found that entrepreneurship research questions the core assumptions of other academic fields and provides new insights into the antecedents, mechanisms, and consequences of their respective core phenomena. Moreover, entrepreneurship research helps to legitimize other academic fields both practically and academically.

The many geographical layers of culture

Uchiyama et al. present a dual inheritance framework for conceptualizing how behavioural genetics and cultural evolution interact and affect heritability. We posit that to achieve a holistic and nuanced representation of the cultural environment and evolution against which genetic effects should be evaluated, it is imperative to consider the multiple geographic cultural layers impacting individuals and genetic heritability.

Which factors affect the performance of technology business incubators in China? An entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective

To examine which factors affect the performance of technology business incubators in China, the present study proposes an entrepreneurial ecosystem framework with four key areas, i.e., people, technology, capital, and infrastructure. We then assess this framework using a three-year panel data set of 857 national-level technology business incubators in 33 major cities from 28 provinces in China, from 2015 to 2017. We utilize factor analysis to downsize dozens of characteristics of these technology business incubators into seven factors related to the four proposed areas. Panel regression model results show that four of the seven factors related to three areas of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, namely people, technology, and capital areas, have statistically significant associations with an incubator’s performance when applied to the overall national data set. Further, seven factors related to all four areas have various statistically significant associations with an incubator’s performance in five major regional data set. In particular, a technology related factor has a consistently statistically significant association with the performance of the incubator in both national model and the five regional models, as we expected.

Impact of Entrepreneurship on the Quality of Public Health Sector Institutions and Policies

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether public health entrepreneurship principles implementation in the public health sector are alternative ways of promoting an immediate improvement of healthcare infrastructure. To contribute to the literature on the impact of public health entrepreneurship on public healthcare infrastructure, we estimate two empirical models, with the first model having institutions and the second model having public healthcare policies as the dependent variable. Our empirical analysis is based on the WHO international health regulation data for all WHO member countries (in order to achieve a balanced panel, we decided to retain 192 of them), covering the period from 2010 through to 2019. The main results obtained using a Poisson panel regression indicate a positive relationship between employing more entrepreneurship within public healthcare and the quality of public healthcare infrastructure represented through institutions and policies. This study produces several contributions to the stream of research on public health entrepreneurship. First, it makes a theoretical contribution in the way that it fills the lacking literature on the relationship between entrepreneurship within the public health sector and efficiency of country-specific public healthcare infrastructure. Second, it offers an empirical quantitative analysis of entrepreneurship that is generally lacking. Concerning policy implications, the third contribution of this paper is the provision of evidence showing alternative ways to improve healthcare infrastructure other than traditionally observed investments in physical infrastructure.

Nowcasting Entrepreneurship: Urban Third Place versus the Creative Class

Researchers have long debated whether entrepreneurship policy should focus on place or people. In this paper, we extend the place-based versus people-based theories using contemporaneous and geographically granular web-user online activity data to predict a region’s proclivity for entrepreneurship. We compare two theoretical hypotheses: the urban third places—informal gathering locations—that facilitate social interaction and entrepreneurship, in contrast to the creative class which fosters entrepreneurial energy and opportunity in a region. Specifically, we assess whether business formation has a stronger statistical relationship with the browsing behavior of individuals visiting websites associated with third place locations—e.g., restaurants or bars—or the concentration of web browsing behavior associated with “the creative class”. Using U.S. county-level data, we find that both urban third places and the creative class can predict about 70% of the variations in regional business formation, with the creative class having a slight competitive edge.

Are Regional Differences in Psychological Characteristics and Their Correlates Robust? Applying Spatial-Analysis Techniques to Examine Regional Variation in Personality

There is growing evidence that psychological characteristics are spatially clustered across geographic regions and that regionally aggregated psychological characteristics are related to important outcomes. However, much of the evidence comes from research that relied on methods that are theoretically ill-suited for working with spatial data. The validity and generalizability of this work are thus unclear. Here we address two main challenges of working with spatial data (i.e., modifiable areal unit problem and spatial dependencies) and evaluate data-analysis techniques designed to tackle those challenges. To illustrate these issues, we investigate the robustness of regional Big Five personality differences and their correlates within the United States (Study 1; N = 3,387,303) and Germany (Study 2; N = 110,029). First, we display regional personality differences using a spatial smoothing approach. Second, we account for the modifiable areal unit problem by examining the correlates of regional personality scores across multiple spatial levels. Third, we account for spatial dependencies using spatial regression models. Our results suggest that regional psychological differences are robust and can reliably be studied across countries and spatial levels. The results also show that ignoring the methodological challenges of spatial data can have serious consequences for research concerned with regional psychological differences.

Entrepreneur-Region Fit and Entrepreneurial Success in China: The Effect of "Confucian" Personality

The personality of entrepreneurs is associated with their entrepreneurial success, and the regional personality plays a crucial role in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Recently, scholars have called for an indigenous personality perspective and combining the personality of entrepreneurs with the regional personality. The current study aimed to investigate the indigenous Confucian personality (e.g., interpersonal relatedness [IR]) and taking an entrepreneur-regional personality fit perspective, allowing testing how entrepreneurs interact with the local ecosystem. Using the personality data of entrepreneurs (N = 1,386) from a representative sample across 42 major cities in China, we found that (1) city-level IR is curvilinearly correlated with the annual income of entrepreneurs, with moderate IR associates with the highest income; and (2) the entrepreneur-regional fit analysis further revealed substantial interplay between an entrepreneur and the city. Specifically, entrepreneurs who have moderate IR and run their business in the city also with moderate IR are most likely to have the highest income. This study highlights the usefulness of investigating indigenous personality and the fit perspective in entrepreneurship research.

A Behavioral Cultural-Based Development Analysis of Entrepreneurship in China

This paper deals with local cultural capital as a motivator for entrepreneurial behavior in China. Following the Culture-Based Development paradigm (CBD), the current study approaches local cultural capital as an entity that can be temporarily segmented into living culture and cultural heritage and can be further differentiated type-wise into material cultural capital and immaterial cultural capital. The main hypothesis of this paper is that living culture and cultural heritage have different roles in the direction of effect on entrepreneurial behavior in China. To test this hypothesis, a quantitative research method is utilized and data is collected from China Statistical Yearbooks, the website of Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage as well as the third and fourth China Economic Census Yearbooks, covering the period from 2010 to 2019 and regarding all 31 provinces of mainland China. This dataset provides indicators for both material and immaterial living culture, respectively represented by the total book circulations in public libraries and performances at art venues, while historical cultural heritage is approximated by intangible cultural heritage (such as the number of folk literature, traditional music, traditional dance and so on) and historical sites. For data analysis, an OLS regression is used to assess the roles of each kind of cultural capital on regional entrepreneurship development. Findings suggest CBD is applicable for analyzing entrepreneurship behavior and the result of the application of model shows a notable impact of culture on entrepreneurship activities in China.

The Role of Geographical Area and Entrepreneurs' Personality

This study proposed a line of research on entrepreneurship based on the analysis of personality traits and geographical area. Its objective is to identify whether certain personality traits or sociocultural variables typical of a particular geographical area influence those who have already started an entrepreneurial activity to keep it up, in other words, to maintain their entrepreneurial intention. The research results reach a sample of 479 entrepreneurs from two Iberian Peninsula geographical areas. The analyse of the psychometric properties on the Entrepreneurial Orientation Questionnaire (EOQ) identified five dimensions of the enterprising personality. They also evidence that geographical location is a factor that contributes to the development of the entrepreneurial intentions that determine the business profile. The results show that entrepreneurs in the northern area tend to maintain their business than those in the central zone.

Emotional skills for entrepreneurial success: the promise of entrepreneurship education and policy

Entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship policies have a common goal—to spur entrepreneurial activity and its impact on individuals, organizations, regions and countries. Despite the efforts of education and policy in equipping entrepreneurs with the skills, resources and competencies they need to thrive, rich and poignant research in the entrepreneurship literature highlights the daunting emotional challenges confronting entrepreneurs as they traverse the entrepreneurial journey. However, the insights, findings and conclusions from this literature have yet to find their way into providing entrepreneurs with the requisite emotional skills and tools needed to harness the opportunities afforded from entrepreneurship rather than succumb as a victim. This paper analyzes the potential for translational research to develop educational and policy approaches, along with clinical tools, methods and strategies to provide entrepreneurs with the skills and competencies for resilience in an entrepreneurial journey fraught with emotional landmines and challenges.

Development of a computerized adaptive test to assess entrepreneurial personality

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE

Entrepreneurial behavior is of great importance nowadays owing to its significance in the generation of economic, social, personal, and cultural wellbeing. This behavior is influenced by cognitive and personality characteristics, as well as by socioeconomic and contextual factors. Entrepreneurial personality is made up of a set of psychological traits including self-efficacy, autonomy, innovation, internal locus of control, achievement motivation, optimism, stress tolerance, and risk-taking. The aim of this research is the development of a computerized adaptive test (CAT) to evaluate entrepreneurial personality.

METHOD

A bank of 120 items was created evaluating various aspects of the entrepreneurial personality. The items were calibrated with the Samejima Graded Response Model using a sample of 1170 participants (Mage = 42.34; SDage = 12.96).

RESULTS

The bank of items had an essentially unidimensional fit to the model. The CAT exhibited high accuracy for evaluating a wide range of θ scores, using a mean of 16 items with a very low standard error (M = 0.157). Relative validity evidence for the CAT was obtained with two additional tests of entrepreneurial personality (the Battery for the Assessment of the Enterprising Personality and the Measure of Enterpreneurial Tendencies and Abilities), with correlations of .908 and .657, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

The CAT developed has appropriate psychometric properties for the evaluation of entrepreneurial people.

Psychological Capital and University Students' Entrepreneurial Intention in China: Mediation Effect of Entrepreneurial Capitals

The aim of this study was to identify the influences of psychological capital (PC) on students' entrepreneurial intention (EI) in China's universities. The mediating effects of Entrepreneurial Capitals were also examined. Based on the analysis of the traditional capital and PC, the paper proposes that traditional capital is the direct factor to drive the behavior of entrepreneurship, while psychological factors do not directly affect EI, but improve EI by influencing traditional capital. A total of 1914 responses from universities in southeast China were analyzed using the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach to test study hypotheses. Results show that PC has a significant indirect impact on students' EI only through traditional financial, human, and social capital (SC). These results support the mediating role of the traditional entrepreneurial capitals in explaining the relationship between PC and EI. Additionally, the impact of SC on EI is higher than that of financial and human capital (HC). Finally, research limitations and implications are discussed and future research directions are suggested.

Psychopathy by U.S. state: A translation of regional measures of the Big Five personality traits to regional measures of psychopathy

Rentfrow et al. (2013) constructs a cross-section of the "Big Five" personality traits and demonstrates their relationship with outcomes variables for the continental United States and the District of Columbia. Hyatt et al. (Forthcoming) creates a means of describing psychopathy in terms of the Big Five personality traits. When these two findings are combined, a state-level estimate of psychopathy is produced. The estimate is conjectural, and if correct, it only describes the levels of psychopathy of states in relation of one state to one another, and is contingent on one particular conceptualization of psychopathy. Among the typical predictions made regarding psychopathy, the variable with the closest bivariate relationship with this new statistical aggregate is the percentage of the population in the state living in an urban area. There is no clear bivariate relationship of regional psychopathy with homicide, violent crime, or property crime rates.

Regional variation in courage and entrepreneurship: The contrasting role of courage for the emergence and survival of start-ups in the United States

OBJECTIVE

There is growing evidence that certain regional personality differences function as important drivers of regional economic development (e.g., via effects on entrepreneurship and innovation activity). The present investigation examines the impact that regional variation in the trait courage has on entrepreneurship.

METHOD

Using data from a new large-scale internet-based study, we provide the first psychological map of courage across the United States (N = 390,341 respondents from 283 U.S. metropolitan regions). We apply regression analyses to relate regional courage scores to archival data on the emergence and survival of start-ups across American regions.

RESULTS

Our mapping approach reveals comparatively high levels of regional courage in the Eastern and Southern regions of the United States. Regional courage scores were positively related to entrepreneurial activity, but negatively related to start-up survival-even when controlling for a wide variety of standard economic predictors. Several robustness checks corroborated these results. Finally, regional differences in economic risk-taking accounted for significant proportions of variance in the relationship between regional courage and entrepreneurship.

CONCLUSION

Our results suggest that regional courage may contribute to a pattern of enterprising and also risky economic behavior, which can lead to high levels of entrepreneurial activity but also shorter start-up survival.

Regional Cultures and the Psychological Geography of Switzerland: Person-Environment-Fit in Personality Predicts Subjective Wellbeing

The present study extended traditional nation-based research on person-culture-fit to the regional level. First, we examined the geographical distribution of Big Five personality traits in Switzerland. Across the 26 Swiss cantons, unique patterns were observed for all traits. For Extraversion and Neuroticism clear language divides emerged between the French- and Italian-speaking South-West vs. the German-speaking North-East. Second, multilevel modeling demonstrated that person-environment-fit in Big Five, composed of elevation (i.e., mean differences between individual profile and cantonal profile), scatter (differences in mean variances) and shape (Pearson correlations between individual and cantonal profiles across all traits; Furr, 2008, 2010), predicted the development of subjective wellbeing (i.e., life satisfaction, satisfaction with personal relationships, positive affect, negative affect) over a period of 4 years. Unexpectedly, while the effects of shape were in line with the person-environment-fit hypothesis (better fit predicted higher subjective wellbeing), the effects of scatter showed the opposite pattern, while null findings were observed for elevation. Across a series of robustness checks, the patterns for shape and elevation were consistently replicated. While that was mostly the case for scatter as well, the effects of scatter appeared to be somewhat less robust and more sensitive to the specific way fit was modeled when predicting certain outcomes (negative affect, positive affect). Distinguishing between supplementary and complementary fit may help to reconcile these findings and future research should explore whether and if so under which conditions these concepts may be applicable to the respective facets of person-culture-fit.

Person-city personality fit and entrepreneurial success: An explorative study in China

While the study of personality differences is a traditional psychological approach in entrepreneurship research, economic research directs attention towards the entrepreneurial ecosystems in which entrepreneurial activity are embedded. We combine both approaches and quantify the interplay between the individual personality make-up of entrepreneurs and the local personality composition of ecosystems, with a special focus on person-city personality fit. Specifically, we analyse personality data from N = 26,405 Chinese residents across 42 major Chinese cities, including N = 1091 Chinese entrepreneurs. Multi-level polynomial regression and response surface plots revealed that: (a) individual-level conscientiousness had a positive effect and individual-level agreeableness and neuroticism had a negative effect on entrepreneurial success, (b) city-level conscientiousness had a positive, and city-level neuroticism had a negative effect on entrepreneurial success, and (c) additional person-city personality fit effects existed for agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. For example, entrepreneurs who are high in agreeableness and conduct their business in a city with a low agreeableness level show the lowest entrepreneurial success. In contrast, entrepreneurs who are low in agreeableness and conduct their business in a city with a high agreeableness level show relatively high entrepreneurial success. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Did Strategic Bombing in the Second World War Lead to ‘German Angst’? A Large–Scale Empirical Test across 89 German Cities

A widespread stereotype holds that the Germans are notorious worriers, an idea captured by the term German angst. An analysis of country–level neurotic personality traits (trait anxiety, trait depression, and trait neuroticism; N = 7 210 276) across 109 countries provided mixed support for this idea; Germany ranked 20th, 31st, and 53rd for depression, anxiety, and neuroticism, respectively, suggesting, at best, the national stereotype is only partly valid. Theories put forward to explain the stereotypical characterization of Germany focus on the collective traumatic events experienced by Germany during World War II (WWII), such as the massive strategic bombing of German cities. We thus examined the link between strategic bombing of 89 German cities and today's regional levels in neurotic traits ( N = 33 534) and related mental health problems. Contrary to the WWII bombing hypothesis, we found negative effects of strategic bombing on regional trait depression and mental health problems. This finding was robust when controlling for a host of economic factors and social structure. We also found Resilience × Stressor interactions: Cities with more severe bombings show more resilience today (lower levels of neurotic traits and mental health problems in the face of a current major stressor—economic hardship). Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology

The Effects of Technology Entrepreneurship on Customers and Society: A Case Study of a Spanish Pharmaceutical Distribution Company

The main purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding, within the field of corporate entrepreneurship, of the various factors that enable technology entrepreneurship in established firms and its principal effects on customers and society. The paper reports on a case study regarding technology entrepreneurship in a Spanish company whose activity is pharmaceutical distribution. This company has been able to overcome the consequences of the worldwide crisis and start an innovative process which includes the installation of new information technology (IT) and an investment of 6 million Euros. It is, in this respect, a model to imitate and the objective of this paper is therefore to discover the managers’ entrepreneurial orientation (EO) characteristics which have made this possible, along with the organizational and social effects resulting from the process. We verify that EO is present in this company and that the development of new IT has important effects on customers and the population.

Macropsychological Factors Predict Regional Economic Resilience During a Major Economic Crisis

Do macropsychological factors predict “hard” economic outcomes like regional economic resilience? Prior approaches to understanding economic resilience have focused on regional economic infrastructure. In contrast, we draw on research highlighting the key role played by psychological factors in economic behaviors. Using large psychological data sets from the United States ( n = 935,858) and Great Britain ( n = 417,217), we characterize region-level psychological correlates of economic resilience. Specifically, we examine links between regions’ levels of psychological traits and their degree of economic slowdown (indexed by changes in entrepreneurial vitality) in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008–2009. In both countries, more emotionally stable regions and regions with a more prevalent entrepreneurial personality makeup showed a significantly lower economic slowdown. This effect was robust when accounting for regional differences in economic infrastructure. Cause cannot be inferred from these correlational findings, but the results nonetheless point to macropsychological factors as potentially protective factors against macroeconomic shocks.