Cognitive Biases, Risk Perception, and Individual's Decision to Start a New Venture

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship of overconfidence and illusion of control towards the start of new venture, taking in consideration the mediating role of risk perception in the context of Tunisia. This article examines students' responses to surveys based on a teaching case titled “Optical Distortion, Inc.” The authors tested hypotheses by correlation and regression analysis. The results show that the perception towards risk associated with new venture plays an important role in decision-making. Moreover, they find that overconfidence and illusion of control reduce risk perception associated to the decision to start a venture. While overconfidence directly affects the decision to start a venture and indirectly through its effect on reducing the risk perception, illusion of control has neither a direct nor an indirect impact on that. These results partially confirm those of Simon show that the mediation exists but partially.