The Relationship between Creativity and Entrepreneurial Intention: A Moderated Mediating Effect Model

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is a kind of highly creative value creation activity, and active creative thinking is a significant feature of entrepreneurs. A high degree of entrepreneurial intention is the prerequisite for undertaking entrepreneurial activities. In recent years, some studies have started to focus on the impact of creativity on individual entrepreneurial intention. At the same time, the recognition of entrepreneurial opportunities has always been the core issue in the study of entrepreneurship, and has a positive impact on entrepreneurial willingness as well. Creativity reflects the ability of building new connections between things, and opportunity recognition also requires potential entrepreneurs to find out the relationship between concepts in confusing information. We need to further explore the nexus between creativity and opportunity recognition and how they affect individual willingness to create new businesses. It cannot be ignored that a fear of failure, as a psychological factor that hinders individual entrepreneurship, may have a certain inhibitory effect on the emergence of entrepreneurial intention. Especially for potential young entrepreneurs, the high failure costs and opportunity cost may discourage them from pursuing entrepreneurship. Taking college students as an example, they are the new force of entrepreneurial activities in China due to their rich knowledge, active thinking and entrepreneurial passion. However, the rate of self-employment of university graduates in China is much lower than that of developed countries. Based on this situation, we investigate 405 college students to explore the relationship between creativity, opportunity recognition, a fear of failure and entrepreneurial intention by constructing a moderated mediating effect model. The questionnaire is used to obtain the data in this paper. After testing the reliability, validity and common method deviation of the samples, the hypotheses are verified. The results of empirical analysis show that individual creativity has a positive impact on his entrepreneurial intention. Opportunity recognition plays a mediating role in the promotion mechanism of creativity on entrepreneurial intention; a fear of failure plays a negative moderation role in the relationship between opportunity recognition and entrepreneurial intention, namely a fear of failure weakens the promotion effect of opportunity recognition on entrepreneurial intention. Furthermore, a fear of failure moderates the partial mediating role of opportunity recognition in the relationship between creativity and entrepreneurial intention. The higher the level of a fear of failure is, the weaker the mediating effect of opportunity recognition is. This paper has some theoretical significance. Firstly, this paper helps us to explore the role of creativity from a cognitive perspective and further broadens the research on the factors affecting entrepreneurial intention. Secondly, the findings show that individual creativity and opportunity recognition are two similar but different constructs in the field of entrepreneurship. Creativity provides cognitive foundation for opportunity recognition, while the latter is a key extrinsic ability of the former. The results also prove that creativity can be regarded as one’s valuable raw material” as some previous studies have pointed out, which can promote entrepreneurial intention by enhancing individual entrepreneurial knowledge and skills. Thirdly, we discuss the moderating effect of a fear of failure in the process of transforming creativity into entrepreneurial intention. It also proves that the Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory” is suitable for Chinese context and provides instrumental support for future research. The findings have some practical significance to promoting college students to start a business. On the one hand, we should pay attention to the cultivation of college students’ creativity and set it as an important part of entrepreneurship education. On the other hand, it is necessary to improve the policies on promoting the entrepreneurship of university students constantly, create reasonable guarantee for undertaking entrepreneurship and reduce the failure cost. By providing favorable external environment, we can help young entrepreneurs to weaken the fear of entrepreneurial failure and understand entrepreneurship objectively. As a result, they can evaluate entrepreneurial opportunities accurately and enhance their own entrepreneurial intentions.