Socio-psychological determinants of opportunity entrepreneurship

This paper examines socio-psychological determinants of entrepreneurial motivation. It identifies four higher-order socio-psychological factors—locus of control, social cynicism, the traditionalism-modernity continuum and the survival-self-actualization continuum—and conducts a multi-level analysis of their effects on the probability of being an opportunity entrepreneur in a given society while controlling for the levels of necessity entrepreneurship and other important factors. Our model also includes varying levels of growth expectations by the focal entrepreneur. The results of our study provide interesting new insights and suggest that socio-psychological factors are significant predictors of entrepreneurial motivation. Moreover, the effects of socio-psychological factors on opportunity entrepreneurship vary depending on growth expectations: the effects are the strongest on high-growth-oriented entrepreneurship.