EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Positivity and higher alertness levels facilitate discovery: Longitudinal sentiment analysis of emotions on Twitter

Katharina Fellnhofer

Technovation, 2023, vol. 122, issue C

Abstract: Emotions stimulate and shape entrepreneurial alertness. In a first U.S.-based study, we analyzed self-reports of entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs by measuring differences in valence in emotions using the frequently applied Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) scale for trait affectivity. In a second study, we explored 28,478 tweets of 185 successful entrepreneurs and 264 non-entrepreneurs (both drawn from Forbes lists) from 2009 to 2021, categorizing their tweeted words into positive and negative based on the Harvard IV-4 dictionary. While the model of Study 1 stresses that examples of positiveness, such as interested, excited, enthusiastic, and inspired, facilitate entrepreneurial alertness levels, which in turn accelerate levels of entrepreneurial discovery, Study 2's sentiment analysis highlights the significant difference between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs’ word usage—successful entrepreneurs tend to use more positive words in their tweets than successful non-entrepreneurs. Our results aim to inform and inspire entrepreneurial educators, policymakers, and (potential) entrepreneurs regarding how positiveness shapes entrepreneurial alertness, which promotes the discovery of potential new business ideas.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial alertness; Positive affect; Negative affect; Entrepreneurial emotions; Entrepreneurial discovery; Twitter (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166497222002176
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:techno:v:122:y:2023:i:c:s0166497222002176

DOI: 10.1016/j.technovation.2022.102666

Access Statistics for this article

Technovation is currently edited by Jonathan Linton

More articles in Technovation from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).

 
Page updated 2024-12-28
Handle: RePEc:eee:techno:v:122:y:2023:i:c:s0166497222002176