Switch or persevere? The effects of experience and metacognition on persistence decisions

Eric Shaunn Mattingly (), Trayan N. Kushev (), Manju K. Ahuja () and Dalong Ma ()
Additional contact information
Eric Shaunn Mattingly: Boise State University
Trayan N. Kushev: California State Polytechnic University
Manju K. Ahuja: University of Louisville
Dalong Ma: Missouri Western State University

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 2016, vol. 12, issue 4, No 13, 1233-1263

Abstract: Abstract This paper extends the scholarly understanding of entrepreneurial persistence decisions by identifying individual-level constructs that moderate which decision criteria have the most influence on entrepreneurs’ persistence decisions. Prior research demonstrates that contextual factors, such as feedback through adversity and the attractiveness of opportunities in an entrepreneur’s environment, determine whether or not an entrepreneur will persist with their current venture. We contribute to this literature by theoretically proposing and empirically testing how individual differences in entrepreneurial experience, metacognitive experience, and metacognitive knowledge moderate which aspects of environmental information entrepreneurs pay the most attention to when deciding whether or not to persist. We test our proposed model using a conjoint experiment that allows for monitoring actual persistence decisions of 124 entrepreneurs. Results suggest that metacognitive knowledge influences persistence decisions primarily through altering the impact that probability of expected outcomes associated with potential alternatives has on entrepreneurs’ persistence decisions. Furthermore, the results provide evidence that more experienced entrepreneurs weigh financial returns and switching costs more heavily when making persistence decisions.

Keywords: Persistence; Entrepreneurship; Metacognition; Threshold theory; Opportunity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11365-016-0391-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:intemj:v:12:y:2016:i:4:d:10.1007_s11365-016-0391-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... urship/journal/11365

DOI: 10.1007/s11365-016-0391-x

Access Statistics for this article

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal is currently edited by Salvador Roig

More articles in International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().