Green start-ups and the role of founder personality

Gary Chapman and Hanna Hottenrott

No 22-009, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: Green start-ups play a vital role in the needed transition towards more environmentally sustainable economies. Yet our understanding of why some founders start green ventures and others do not remains incomplete. We build on the cognitive and decision-making perspectives on start-ups proenvironmental engagement to shed light on the role of founders' personality traits - focusing on the 'Big 5' and risk tolerance - in explaining whether founders' start new ventures with environmentally friendly products. Our analysis of a large, representative, manufacturing and service sector sample of German start-ups illustrates the important role of founder personality traits. Specifically, openness and extraversion promote environmentally friendly products while neuroticism inhibits it. We discuss the implications of these insights.

Keywords: emission reduction; environmentally friendly products; green innovation; Big Fivepersonality traits; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G24 L26 O25 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-ene, nep-ent, nep-env, nep-eur, nep-ino, nep-sbm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/251953/1/1798301725.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Green start-ups and the role of founder personality (2022)
Working Paper: Green Start-ups and the Role of Founder Personality (2022)
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:zbw:zewdip:22009

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (econstor@zbw-workspace.eu).