Highway to hell: Cultural propensity and digital infrastructure gap as recipe to entrepreneurial death

Abstract

This paper aims to shed light on the actual rate of new venture death in the context of a high level of digital entrepreneurship. Using three different country-level databases, it investigates how different combinations of socio-cultural propensity towards entrepreneurship, exposure to digital media, and digital infrastructure lead to entrepreneurial death. Longitudinal data on 23 European countries are analyzed employing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fs-QCA). The findings suggest that, in a context characterized by the presence of high levels of socio-cultural propensity toward entrepreneurship and exposure to digital media and in the absence of high levels of technological and human digital infrastructure, the associated outcome will be a high level of entrepreneurial death for new ventures.