The impact of social capital on the entrepreneurial performance of university business incubators: the moderating roles of entrepreneurs' risk-taking and managers' proactive behavior

Abstract

University incubators are regarded as the main mode of promoting knowledge transfer and innovation development. How to overcome the lack of entrepreneurial experience and obtain positive external support is the key to improve entrepreneurial performance. The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of social capital on entrepreneurial performance through the enhancement of entrepreneurs' risk-taking behavior and incubator managers' proactive behavior. This study employed a quantitative approach: 414 entrepreneurs from 18 university incubators of Guizhou Province in China were investigated through stratified sampling and purpose sampling. SPSS.26 software was used for descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and multiple regression analysis. The analyses revealed a significant direct relationship between social capital and the entrepreneurial performance of new ventures in university incubators. The proactive behavior of incubator managers was found to moderate the relationship between social capital and entrepreneurial performance. Furthermore, entrepreneurs' risk-taking was found to moderate the relationship between relational social capital and entrepreneurial performance, but did not affect the impacts of cognitive and structural social capital on entrepreneurial performance.