Start-Up Motivation, Personality, Entrepreneurial Persistence and Entrepreneurial Development

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The goal of this research project is to conduct an in-depth analysis of the influence of entrepreneurs’ motivations and personalities on entrepreneurial plans, decisions, persistence and business development. It is generally assumed that only opportunity entrepreneurs motivated by pull motives, e.g. the opportunity to pursue a business idea, are willing and able to realize growth, innovation and job creation potentials. With regard to personality, we are in particular interested in the impact of the big five, locus of control and self-efficacy. While a more internal locus of control has been shown to be closely linked to investment decisions and labor market success, individuals with higher self-efficacy are more likely to pursue and persist in accomplishing an intended action. Thus, a higher internal locus of control and a higher self-efficacy are ceteris paribus expected to be associated with higher intentions, higher investments, and higher success ceteris paribus. The main analysis is based on a longitudinal panel survey data for a sample of German business founders who started their businesses in 2009. The data set contains information on individual characteristics, motivation, personality, business characteristics as well as many success indicators and enables us to empirically examine our research questions applying quantitative econometric methods. We will use two supplementary data sets to verify our constructs and/or results (wherever possible). One attractive feature of the main data set is that it contains multiple dimensions capturing entrepreneurial success and business development in the short as well as medium-to-long run that can roughly be classified in two categories: While the first category comprises indicators that mainly affect the individual entrepreneur herself (persistence, survival, income), the second group including business growth, expansion and innovation activities have further direct and indirect implications for economic and employment growth that go beyond the examined business itself, thus allowing for an multi-faceted analysis of the influence of motivation and personality.