Examining Psychological Mediators in Entrepreneurship: Experimental Designs, Remedies, and Recommendations

Dan K. Hsu, J. Robert Mitchell and Xian Cao

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 2024, vol. 48, issue 1, 418-445

Abstract: Psychological mediators underlie many entrepreneurship phenomena. Unfolding psychological mechanisms enhances our understanding of theoretical relationships in entrepreneurship. This paper first reviews the current state of entrepreneurship studies examining psychological mediators and identifies the hurdles that push researchers away from employing randomized experiments to unfold the causal relationships underlying mediation. To alleviate these hurdles, we then propose parsimonious yet rigorous experimental designs that make experiments testing psychological mediators in entrepreneurship feasible and cost efficient. In addition, when manipulating the mediator is not feasible, we theorize and identify two remedies a single experiment can use to examine the causal chain underlying mediation.

Keywords: experimental methods/simulation; research methods; manuscripts: specialty areas; entrepreneurship; manuscripts: specialty areas; psychology; manuscripts: general areas; mediation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:entthe:v:48:y:2024:i:1:p:418-445

DOI: 10.1177/10422587231152824

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