Entrepreneurs happiness, personal initiatives and firm performance: evidence from China

Abstract

This article constructed a theoretical model including entrepreneurs’ happiness, personal initiative and firm performance, and tested the hypotheses using questionnaire survey and SEM analysis. The path analysis of 660 samples indicates that entrepreneurs’ Eudaimonic Well-Being helps to enhance firm performance, but the Hedonic Well-Being has no significant direct effect on firm performance. Eudaimonic Well-Being can promote entrepreneurs to exhibit more task-oriented and relationship-oriented personal initiatives, but Hedonic Well-Being has no significant influence on both dimensions of personal initiatives. Only relationship-oriented personal initiative has a positive and significant effect on firm performance, while task-oriented personal initiative negatively but insignificantly influences firm performance. This study also provides some suggestions for entrepreneurs and government officers to improve the happiness and personal initiatives of Chinese entrepreneurs.