Entrepreneurship and Well-being: A Literature Review and Prospects

Abstract

Prior entrepreneurship research focuses on determinants of success, while pays insufficient attention to the psychological price of entrepreneurship. Well-being is defined as a positive mental state, including both affective experience and cognitive judgments. It is also an important psychological indicator of entrepreneurial success, and to some extent, it can reflect the psychological price of entrepreneurship. Well-being plays an important role in explaining the entrepreneurs’ persistence while making no profits, learning from failure and even the motivation to try again after failure. Well-being in the entrepreneurship process（hereinafter referred to as entrepreneurial well-being）is defined as a positive state that reflects entrepreneurs’ affective experience and cognitive judgments in the entrepreneurship process. Entrepreneurial well-being not only explains why entrepreneurs persist in entrepreneurship although entrepreneurial failure is a common occurrence, but also provides us a new perspective that helps us understand which benefits entrepreneurs can get except for financial income and mental growth. By searching literature in the entrepreneurship and well-being field, and reading it one by one to confirm whether the literature addresses entrepreneurial well-being, we get 31 studies finally. We review these studies, give the definition of entrepreneurial well-being, compare entrepreneurial well-being with other psychological concepts such as emotion, and summarize its antecedents, consequences, contextual factors, Finally, we propose four directions for future research. First, clarify the definition of entrepreneurial well-being in a different research context, and then develop measures of entrepreneurial well-being. Second, extend research context of entrepreneurial well-being from different perspectives. Specifically, future research should:（1）explore the effects of the ownership structure, female entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, informal entrepreneurship or other contexts on the formation of entrepreneurial well-being and their functional mechanisms;（2）pay more attention to the entrepreneurial team formation, entrepreneurial opportunity identification process, or entrepreneurial failure and other entrepreneurial stages. Third, enrich research on the formation mechanism of entrepreneurial well-being, and explore its asymmetry in the process of formation. Specifically, future research should:（1）explore the effects of high initial expectations on entrepreneurial well-being continuously, and justify whether some factors can only bring without well-being” and other factors can only bring without ill-being” or not;（2）explore the important role that entrepreneurial well-being plays in the entrepreneurial ecosystem;（3）explore the dynamic formation of entrepreneurial well-being from the sociology perspective; Fourth, explore the antecedents to the combination and balance of entrepreneurial well-being and financial performance.