Risk-Taking Propensity and Entrepreneurship: The Role of Power Distance in Six Countries

The personality of entrepreneurs can have an important influence on entrepreneurial startup intentions and behaviors. Risk-taking propensity can be defined as a person’s orientation to take risks. Risk-taking propensity, which is an element of the personality of entrepreneurs, is considered to be critical for the decision to enter the entrepreneurship career. Despite the widely researched relationship between one’s risk-taking propensity for entrepreneurial intentions and new firm startups, a research gap exists because findings were not consistent and did not take into account the cultural element of power distance. In this study, a country- moderated hypothesis about the relationship between a person’s risk-taking propensity and his or her entrepreneurship (activities or intentions) was developed and empirically tested by using data collected through a structured questionnaire from 1,414 students in six countries (China, Finland, Oman, Portugal, Slovenia and the United States). Multinominal logistic reg...