Entrepreneurs embrace competition: Evidence from a lab-in-the-field study

Diemo Urbig, Werner Boente, Vivien D. Procher and Sandro Lombardo
Additional contact information
Werner Boente: Schumpeter School of Business and Economics, University of Wuppertal
Vivien D. Procher: Grenoble Ecole de Management, Univ Grenoble Alpes ComUE and RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung
Sandro Lombardo: Schumpeter School of Business and Economics, University of Wuppertal
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Werner Bönte ()

No sdp20001, Schumpeter Discussion Papers from Universitätsbibliothek Wuppertal, University Library

Abstract: Referring to Isreal M. Kirzner (1973) and Joseph A. Schumpeter (1934), who emphasized the competitive nature of entrepreneurship, this study investigates whether potential and revealed entrepreneurs are more likely to seek competition than non-entrepreneurs. We provide a conceptual framework that links entrepreneurship to three facets of individual competitiveness drawn from economic, entrepreneurship, and psychological research: a desire to win, striving for personal development, and an enjoyment of competition. Following economic research linking competitive behavior in experiments to career choices, we conduct a lab-in-the-field study and demonstrate that entrepreneurs are more likely to enter competitions than non-entrepreneurs. Accounting for individual desires to win and mastery-related achievement motivations, our results indicate that entrepreneurs tend to enter competition for the sake of competition itself rather than for the prospect of winning it or personal development. Our results suggest that enjoyment of competition might be an additional factor driving entrepreneurs’ market entry decisions beyond well-known factors like overconfidence and risk taking.

Keywords: Enjoyment of competition; Individual competitiveness; Entrepreneurship; Behavioral Economics; Lab-in-the-field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-com, nep-ent, nep-exp and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://elekpub.bib.uni-wuppertal.de/ubwhsmig/down ... riginalFilename=true (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Entrepreneurs embrace competition: evidence from a lab-in-the-field study (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bwu:schdps:sdp20001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Schumpeter Discussion Papers from Universitätsbibliothek Wuppertal, University Library
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Frank Hoffmann ().