The Effects of Entrepreneurial Personality Traits on Opportunity Identification: An Empirical Study Based on PSED II

Abstract

Since opportunity identification is the beginning of entrepreneurship, research on its factors can not only push forward the development of entrepreneurial theories, but also hold great significance for entrepreneurial activities and policy formulation on entrepreneurship. However, there is currently no relevant research on the issue how personality traits influence entrepreneurs' opportunity recognition modes yet. From the perspective of traits, this paper develops an entrepreneurial opportunity identification model. By binary and multinomial logit regression, this paper tests the influence of personality traits which include innovation propensity, need for achievement, self efficacy, locus of control, tolerance for ambiguity, autonomy on the choice of opportunity identification approach such as searching, discovery and emergence with cross-section data of PSED II. The result shows that need for achievement, locus of control, tolerance for ambiguity and autonomy do affect entrepreneurs' choice of opportunity identification approach between searching and discovery as well as between discovery and emergence.