Untangling the effects of entrepreneurial opportunity on the performance of peasant entrepreneurship: the moderating roles of entrepreneurial effort and regional poverty level

ABSTRACT

The literature suggests both that entrepreneurship is a critical means of poverty alleviation, and that entrepreneurial opportunity is at the heart of entrepreneurial activity. Yet the extant research has devoted little attention to the role of entrepreneurial opportunity in entrepreneurial activity and poverty reduction. This paper explores the relationship between the types of entrepreneurial opportunity and the entrepreneurial performance of peasant entrepreneurs. Using a sample of peasant entrepreneurs from Zhejiang, China, we find that while dependence on self-identified opportunities is positively associated with entrepreneurial performance, dependence on social network- or government-identified opportunities does not positively contribute to the performance. Furthermore, we find that both entrepreneurial effort and the regional poverty level moderate the relationship between entrepreneurial opportunity and performance. This article contributes to the study of peasant entrepreneurship and poverty alleviation by demonstrating that the role of entrepreneurial opportunity is more complex and nuanced when it comes to achieving improved entrepreneurial performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Peasant entrepreneurship
• entrepreneurial opportunity
• entrepreneurial performance
• poverty alleviation

Acknowledgments

We are sincerely grateful to Steven Si, David Ahlstrom, John Cullen and Jiang Wei for their valuable comments, and to Alistair Anderson and other participants in the Entrepreneurship & Regional Development special issue workshop for instrumental feedback on the early draft of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study is supported by research grants (National Natural Science Foundation of China: 71572174, 71732008).