Does Fear of Climate Change Alter Entrepreneurial Opportunities?

Abstract

Currently, the global mood is one of anxiety and fear over catastrophes such as climate change. The important implications of these proliferating fears in the broader public notwithstanding, we concern ourselves with how this widespread and growing fear of impending climate change—which we refer to as the ‘Big F’—relates to entrepreneurial opportunity recognition and exploitation. A host of fears (e.g. fears of failure, rejection) have been explored theoretically and empirically in the entrepreneurship literature. However, the dominant approach to examining entrepreneurial fear has mostly been individual and situation specific across a limited time frame -- i.e., “little f” fears. We aim to explore whether entrepreneurship works the same way in the context of “Big F” fear (i.e. the fear of impending climate change that exists across large populations simultaneously, over an extended period of time) as it does under normal conditions. Thus, our paper examines how looming climate change likely influences why, how, when, and what entrepreneurial behavior occurs and who takes part.