The Impact of Collective Optimism on New Venture Creation and Growth: A Social Contagion Perspective

Aaron H. Anglin, Aaron F. McKenny and Jeremy C. Short

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 2018, vol. 42, issue 3, 390-425

Abstract: Social contagion research suggests that individual decision making is shaped by collective, social processes. We extend the entrepreneurial optimism literature by arguing that collective optimism—the shared, positive expectations about future outcomes—is salient to key entrepreneurial outcomes. We test our position by examining how fluctuations in U.S. collective entrepreneurial optimism influence venture creation and growth using 1993–2010 NFIB entrepreneurial optimism data. Results indicate that collective entrepreneurial optimism exhibits a curvilinear relationship with venture creation and growth, which is moderated by environmental dynamism. We validate the NFIB measure by constructing an alternative measure of collective entrepreneurial optimism using media reports.

Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/etap.12256 (text/html)

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:sae:entthe:v:42:y:2018:i:3:p:390-425

DOI: 10.1111/etap.12256

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().