This piece of research aims to explain the drivers of early-stage entrepreneurship in factor-driven economies and how these are affected by several cognitive factors. This study covers literature on several driving factors of entrepreneurial activity, trying to formulate a framework of determinants of early-stage agricultural entrepreneurial activity. For this purpose, the adult population survey (APS) data of factor-driven economies published by GEM has been used. The selected respondents (848) include those individuals who, alone or with other individuals, presently involved in venture creation, including any self-employment in the agricultural sector. The impact of cognitive and social capital factors on early-stage entrepreneurial activity is measured using logistic regression. The findings suggest that its opportunity perception and self-efficacy, which are the major motivators of early-stage entrepreneurship in developing nations. Also, there are gender biases and age-related negativity with respect to new agri-business creation in developing countries.
TopIntroduction
Entrepreneurship is regarded as the most important phenomenon resulting in employment generation along with the promotion of creativity and innovation, leading to socio-economic welfare (Acs et al. 2008). Taking this notion to the next level, Sieger et al. (2016) relate the future and wellbeing of the economies with the ongoing and future entrepreneurial activities. In an earlier study, Reynolds et al. (2004) define entrepreneurship as an economy adjuster, shaping the economy with the help of several courses of action. Since entrepreneurship is imperative for multi-dimensional growth of the economy, it is essential to take it to another level and for that, proper policy implementation is required taking into consideration all those factors which promote and restrict individuals from taking up entrepreneurial activities. If this issue is not dealt with appropriate understanding, there are chances of underutilization of human capital, resulting in the continuation of lower standards of living along with poor policy implementation (Langowitz and Minniti 2007).
During the 1900s and 2000s, when the focus of research was on developing a common research framework which could forecast and illustrate a unique set of empirical phenomena (Davidsson, 2005; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000), the entrepreneurship scholars also put their focus on advancing new theories and paradigms which could predict the individual behaviour (Massis et al. 2018). This attention towards theory-driven research helps the entrepreneurship researchers to observe that there exist differences with respect to entrepreneuship trends across sectors (McDougall, 1989; Zahra, 1996). Several scholars laid stress on sector specific entrepreneurial study as it can provide more sensible theoretical explanations, more accuracy while testing things empirically and a more robust implication of theory (Baker, Gedajlovic, &Lubatkin, 2005; Navis &Ozbek, 2016; Welter, 2011; Zahra & Wright, 2011). Even recently, considering the necessity of entrepreneurial process, several studies (Afandi et al. 2017; Arafat et al. 2018; Pindado et al. 2018; Pindado and Sánchez 2017; Arafat and Saleem 2017a) laid stress on the sector-specific study of entrepreneurship which may result in a more precise understanding of the subject.
Furthermore, many studies show that the models and methods applied to generic entrepreneurship research can also be used in studying the same for agriculture entrepreneurship (Carter, 1998; Carter and Rosa, 1998; Borsch and Forsman, 2001; McNally, 2001). Thus, this study concentrates on the agriculture sector’s early-stage entrepreneurial activity within the factor-driven economies and on recognising the drivers of new agri-business firm.