Appraisals matter: relationships between entrepreneurs' stress appraisals and venture-based outcomes
International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research
ISSN: 1355-2554
Article publication date: 2 April 2021
Issue publication date: 27 May 2021
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how stress appraisals (i.e. cognitive evaluations) influence entrepreneurial outcomes like expected financial well-being, life satisfaction, business growth and exit intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a mixed-methods approach to provide methodological triangulation by analyzing data from two independent samples (qualitative data from 100 entrepreneurs in Study 1; quantitative regression analysis of a sample of 142 entrepreneurs in Study 2).
Findings
Results from the qualitative exploration (Study 1) show that entrepreneurs appraised venture-related stressors differently as a challenge, threat or hindrance. The quantitative study (Study 2) found that challenge stress appraisals were positively related to expected financial well-being and expected life satisfaction, threat stress appraisals were negatively related to expected financial well-being and positively related to business exit intentions, and hindrance stress appraisals were positively related to expected business growth and negatively related to business exit intentions.
Originality/value
Most entrepreneurship research focuses on stressors rather than appraisals of the stressor. Drawing upon the transactional theory of stress that explains how stress appraisals are an important consideration for understanding the stress process, these two studies showed that stress appraisals differ for each entrepreneur (Study 1) and that stress appraisals explain more variance in many entrepreneurial outcomes than stressors (Study 2).
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Editor Natalia Vershinina and reviewers for their constructive feedback and acknowledge the Old Dominion University Department of Management for providing funding to compensate participants.
Abbreviations: CFI, Comparative Fit Index; TLI, Tucker Lewis Index; RMSEA, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation; SRMR, Standardized Root Mean Square Residual.
Citation
Bennett, A.A., Lanivich, S.E., Moeini Gharagozloo, M.M. and Akbulut, Y. (2021), "Appraisals matter: relationships between entrepreneurs' stress appraisals and venture-based outcomes", International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, Vol. 27 No. 4, pp. 970-988. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-03-2020-0133
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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