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

这个研究项目的目标是深入分析企业家的动机和个性对创业计划、决策、坚持和业务发展的影响。一般认为，只有受到拉动动机激励的机会企业家，例如追求商业理念的机会，才愿意并能够实现增长、创新和创造就业的潜力。关于人格，我们特别感兴趣的是五大因素，控制点和自我效能的影响。虽然内部控制点与投资决策和劳动力市场成功密切相关，但自我效能感较高的人更有可能追求并坚持完成预期的行动。因此，在其他条件下，较高的内部控制点和较高的自我效能被认为与较高的意图、较高的投资和较高的成功有关。主要分析基于对2009年开始创业的德国企业创始人样本的纵向面板调查数据。该数据集包含个人特征、动机、个性、商业特征以及许多成功指标的信息，使我们能够应用定量计量经济学方法对我们的研究问题进行实证检验。我们将使用两个补充数据集来验证我们的结构和/或结果（只要可能）。主要数据集的一个吸引人的特点是，它包含了多个维度，捕捉了短期和中长期的创业成功和业务发展，大致可以分为两类：第一类指标主要影响个体企业家本人（坚持、生存、收入），第二组指标包括企业增长、扩张和创新活动，对经济和就业增长有进一步的直接和间接影响，超出了所研究的企业本身，从而可以对动机和个性的影响进行多方面的分析。

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.