Risky business: Understanding intergenerational persistence in entrepreneurship

企业家精神通常被视为经济增长、创造就业和社会流动性的驱动力。政策制定者主张支持创业，将其作为地区和国家层面社会经济发展的一种前进方式（HM Government, 2017），因此帮助新公司形成是繁荣的关键。鉴于英国即将脱离欧盟单一市场，以及疫情对经济造成的冲击，鼓励蓬勃发展的创业文化推动经济增长就显得尤为重要。虽然积极的社会价值往往归因于创业活动，但主动采取行动的个人面临着高度的不确定性，因为创业往往以失败告终。创业可能是一项困难、具有挑战性和压力的活动，需要付出巨大的个人和社会成本。尽管政府通过补贴、税收抵免和基础设施提供支持，以帮助应对挑战和减轻风险，但压力负担往往落在企业家及其家人身上。在文献中，家族在延续企业家精神方面的重要性是众所周知的：企业家往往是企业家的孩子。然而，我们对这种代际持续存在的机制以及父母创业行为对子女的影响知之甚少。这就是我们的项目要解决的问题，找出政策鼓励和支持创业精神的新途径。创业偏好和行为在家庭背景下的出现是一个复杂的过程。具有创业精神的父母提供了积极的榜样，可以激励他们的孩子选择职业。与此同时，创业父母因职业倦怠和创业失败而经历的负面情绪可能会强烈影响孩子，使他们对未来的偏好偏离创业职业。在一个新的概念框架上，本项目将研究创业代际持续性的三个来源：1)传递效应：父母提供榜样和学习来源对儿童职业意向的直接影响；2)框架效应：对儿童风险感知的间接影响，跟随自己冒险创业的父母；iii)附带效应：创业家庭中情绪压力的生活经历对儿童幸福感的间接影响。为了验证我们假设的代际持久性分解为这些直接和间接机制，我们将借鉴并扩展雅芳父母与儿童纵向研究（ALSPAC）的数据：一项1991年建立的英国出生队列研究，跟踪并收集了关于焦点个体（“90后儿童”）及其家庭成员的广泛信息。在第一阶段，我们将分析现有的多代和纵向数据，以解决儿童如何应对风险感知和情绪压力作为创业家庭的一部分的问题。在第二阶段，我们将通过收集一项新的调查来衡量现已接近30岁的焦点个人的创业意图和行为，从而增强现有数据。通过在ALSPAC关于儿童和父母的健康、发展和社会经济特征的信息中增加新的创业数据，该项目将扩大我们对家庭对职业选择的影响的理解。通过向学术界提供与ALSPAC独特资源相结合的新数据，该项目将为企业精神方面的多学科研究创造新的机会，考虑到生物、心理和社会经济因素。这些发现将使决策者了解家庭作为企业家更大的支持基础设施的一部分的作用，这是政策辩论中仍然缺乏的一个方面。

Entrepreneurship is often viewed as a driver of economic growth, employment creation, and social mobility. Policymakers advocate support for entrepreneurship as a way forward for socioeconomic development at regional and national level (HM Government, 2017), therefore helping new firms to form is key to prosperity. Encouraging a thriving entrepreneurial culture to drive economic growth is even more important in light of the UK's imminent departure from the EU single market, and the economic shock resulting from the pandemic.Although a positive societal value is often attributed to entrepreneurial activity, the individuals taking the initiative face a high degree of uncertainty, as business start-ups often end in failure. Entrepreneurship can be a difficult, challenging and stressful activity, with significant personal and social costs. Despite government support through subsidies, tax credits and infrastructure to help with the challenges and mitigate the risks, the stress burden often falls on the entrepreneurs and their families.The importance of family in perpetuating entrepreneurialism is well known in the literature: entrepreneurs are often children of entrepreneurs. We know much less, however, about the mechanisms underlying this intergenerational persistence, and the effects of parental entrepreneurial behaviours on their children. This is what our project will address, identifying new ways in which policy can encourage and support entrepreneurialism.The emergence of entrepreneurial preferences and behaviours in the family context is a complex process. Entrepreneurial parents offer positive role models and can inspire the career choices of their children. At the same time, the negative emotions that entrepreneurial parents experience because of burnout and business failures may strongly affect the children, slanting future preferences away from an entrepreneurial career. Building on a new conceptual framework, this project will investigate three sources of intergenerational persistence in entrepreneurship: i) transmission effects: the direct impact on child career intentions of parents providing role models and sources of learning, ii) framing effects: the indirect impacts on child risk perception, following parents who themselves took the risk of starting a company; and iii) collateral effects: the indirect effects on the children's wellbeing, affected by the lived experience of emotional stress in an entrepreneurial family.To test our hypothesized decomposition of intergenerational persistence into these direct and indirect mechanisms, we will draw upon and extend data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC): a UK birth cohort study set up in 1991 that has followed and collected a wide range of information about the focal individuals ("the Children of the 90s") and their family members. In a first phase, we will analyse the existing multi-generational and longitudinal data to address the question of how children respond in their risk perception and emotional stress to being part of an entrepreneurial family. In a second phase, we will enhance the existing data by collecting a new survey to measure the entrepreneurial intentions and behaviour of the focal individuals, now approaching 30 years of age.By adding new entrepreneurship data to the ALSPAC information on health, development and socio-economic characteristics of children and parents, this project will broaden our understanding of family influences on career choice. By making available to the academic community the new data integrated with the ALSPAC unique resources, the project will create novel opportunities for multi-disciplinary research in entrepreneurship, accounting for biological, psychological and socio-economic factors. The findings will inform policymakers about the role of the family as part of a larger supporting infrastructure for entrepreneurs, a dimension still lacking in the policy debate.