Entrepreneurial Attitudes, Perceptions, Intentions

Key Variables


  • EQUALINC: Preference for similar standards of living in the country
  • NBGOODC: People consider starting a business a desirable career choice
  • NBSTATUS: Those successful at starting a business have a high level of status and respect
  • NBMEDIA: You will often see stories in the public media about successful new businesses
  • KNOWENT : Personally knows someone who started a firm in the past two years 
  • OPPORT: Perceives good opportunities to start a business in the area where you live
  • SUSKIL: Perceives to have the required knowledge and skills to start a business 
  • FEARFAIL: Fear of failure would prevent you from starting a business
  • FUTSUP: Entrepreneurial intentions - expecting to start a new business in the next three years


GEM was one of the first initiatives that asked items that relate to attitudes and perceptions to entrepreneurship. Now, with multiple years of data available for many countries, it is possible to not only analyze differences between countries but also to observe changes over time. 

The items listed below are, except for the item on acceptance of income differences (EQUALINC) specifically related to the event of starting a new business and are therefore different from the abundant set of indicators on more general aspects of culture. Perceptions relate to individual assessments that relate to perceptions of opportunities (OPPORT), self-efficacy (SUSKIL), fear of failure (FEARFAIL) and acquaintance with entrepreneurship through others in the personal network (KNOWENT). 

Attitudes capture assessments, by the individual respondent, on what the national beliefs (hence the ‘NB’ abbreviation) are with respect to some items associated with entrepreneurship. These national beliefs are also assessed in the GEM National Expert Surveys (NES). Next to perceptions and intentions, a more concrete measure captures the phase just before actual involvement in new business activities: the intention to start a business. 

It should be clear that, as such, intentions to start a business differ from nascent entrepreneurship. For nascent entrepreneurship, some specific actions have been undertaken to get the business started; this is not necessarily the case for all individuals with intentions to start a business within the next three years.


Perceptions

  • Do you know someone personally who started a business in the past 2 years? {KNOWENT}
  • In the next six months, will there be good opportunities for starting a business in the area where you live? {OPPORT} 
  • Do you have the knowledge, skill and experience required to start a new business? {SUSKILL}
  • Would fear of failure prevent you from starting a business? {FEARFAIL}


Attitudes

Do you agree with the following four statements? 

  • In your country, most people would prefer that everyone had a similar standard of living {EQUALINC}
  • In your country, most people consider starting a new business a desirable career choice {NBGOODC}
  • In your country, those successful at starting a new business have a high level of status and respect {NBSTATUS}
  • In your country, you will often see stories in the public media about successful new businesses  {NBMEDIA}


Intentions

  • Are you, alone or with others, expecting to start a new business, including any type of self-employment, within the next three years? {FUTSUP}


Missing data on attitudes and perceptions for half of the adult population

To save interview times and costs, the sets of questions related to attitudes and perceptions (four questions each) have been randomly assigned over two groups of respondents between 2003 and 2009. An exception was made for all respondents that answered affirmatively to either of the main selection questions BSTART, BJOBST, OWNMGE, BUSANG, DISCENT and FUTSUP. In 2010 the two sets have been included for all respondents, while in 2011 the decision was made to abandon the four items on attitudes (even though some countries continue including these items on an optional basis) and continue with the perception items for all respondents.


Cultural differences in attitudes and perceptions

It should be born in mind that with perceptions and attitudes there may be cultural issues at play that could strongly influence the results. Hence, it is preferable to use multiple years in your analysis, and to account for these national influences as much as possible. This could, for analysis at the national level, for instance be done using panel data analysis.


Intentions

It is likely that most persons who are currently starting a business (see section on entrepreneurial activity) are also expecting to start their business within three years. This implies that for analysis on entrepreneurial intentions, researchers may do well to separate those who have these intentions and have indicated to be a nascent entrepreneur from those who have the same intentions but were not yet actively pursuing these intentions at the time of the survey. This is also one of the reasons why the alternative measure FUTSUPNO has been included in the most recent GEM Global Reports.

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