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的驱动力。政策制定者倡导支持创业，将其作为区域和国家层面社会经济发展的前进道路（HM政府，2017），因此帮助新公司的形成是繁荣的关键。鉴于英国即将脱离欧盟单一市场，以及疫情带来的经济冲击，鼓励蓬勃发展的创业文化以推动经济增长更为重要。尽管创业活动通常被赋予积极的社会价值，但由于创业往往以失败告终，因此采取主动的个人面临高度的不确定性。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代价。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庭身上，福尔斯在文献中众所周知，家庭在延续企业家主义方面的重要性：企业家往往是企业家的子女。然而，我们对这种代际持续性背后的机制以及父母创业行为对其子女的影响知之甚少。这就是我们的项目所要解决的问题，确定政策可以鼓励和支持创业的新方法。在家庭背景下，创业偏好和行为的出现是一个复杂的过程。企业家父母提供了积极的榜样，可以激励他们的孩子的职业选择。与此同时，创业父母因职业倦怠和企业失败而产生的负面情绪可能会强烈影响孩子，使他们未来的偏好远离创业生涯。该项目将在一个新的概念框架基础上，调查世代间持续创业的三个来源：一）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，二）框架效应：在父母自己冒险创办公司之后，对儿童风险认知的间接影响;以及三）附带效应：对孩子的幸福感的间接影响，受到企业家家庭中情绪压力的生活体验的影响。为了测试我们假设的代际持久性分解为这些直接和间接机制，我们将借鉴和扩展雅芳父母和孩子纵向研究（ALSPAC）的数据：1991年建立的一项英国出生队列研究，跟踪并收集了有关重点人群（"90年代儿童"）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，以解决儿童如何在他们的风险认知和情绪压力的问题，成为一个创业家庭的一部分。在第二阶段，我们将加强现有的数据，收集一项新的调查，以衡量目前接近30岁的重点个人的创业意图和行为，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，该项目将为创业方面的多学科研究创造新的机会，包括生物，心理和社会经济因素。调查结果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.