Impact of demographic and psychological factors to MSME's business performance during Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Among many factors affecting the SME performance, the owner's attitude toward its business might have the crucial roles. This study aimed to analyze the impact of owner's demographic and psychological attributes that probably affect the business performance of MSMEs in the culinary field in the Bandung area during the COVID-19 pandemic. Demographics attributes included in this study are age, gender, education level and years of service, while psychological attributes included are self-efficacy, risk taking, innovation, leadership, need for achievement, locus of control, sociability and planning. This research was conducted by distributing online questionnaires to 38 culinary business owners in the Bandung area. The impact of demographic and psychological factors was examined using the Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) method with the help of Smart PLS 3.0 software. As the result this research found that demographic factors have no effect while some psychological factors affect the business performance of MSMEs in the culinary field in the Bandung area during the COVID-19 pandemic. The psychological factors that have a positive effect are risk taking and sociability. The results showed that the psychological factors namely risk taking and sociability factors make the culinary MSMEs in able to survive during the COVID-19 pandemic and their business performance were improved. The result of this study might be helpful for business practitioners to do self-evaluation for improving their business performance.