Motivated but not starting: how fear of failure impacts entrepreneurial intentions

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates how dispositional fear of failure moderates the relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions to understand why otherwise confident potential nascent entrepreneurs may not act on their entrepreneurial intentions. We found that a dispositional fear of the social consequences of failure dampens the otherwise positive relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions. The impact being more substantial for individuals with the stronger entrepreneurial self-efficacy beliefs. This suggests that the fear of the social consequences of failure that might prevent confident nascent entrepreneurs from acting on their entrepreneurial intentions. The study therefore shifts focus from the well-established relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions to understand what influences the magnitude of this relationship. It also unpacks fear of failure from predominately used single item measure found in GEM studies to a multi-item measure.

KEYWORDS:

• Fear of failure
• Entrepreneurial self-efficacy
• Entrepreneurial intentions
• Failure
• Conroy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.