Does opportunity co-creation help the poor entrepreneurs? Evidence from China

Abstract

Extreme poverty can be alleviated through entrepreneurship, but starting a business can be elusive among impoverished people, partly due to a lack of access to entrepreneurial opportunities. In the current literature, the source of entrepreneurial opportunity for the poor remains unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we used the opportunity co-creation perspective to examine the impact of opportunity co-creation on the entrepreneurial performance of the poor and its various influence pathways. We developed a chain multiple mediation model and surveyed 330 poor entrepreneurs from the Wuling Mountain Region, which used to be one of the 14 contiguous poverty-stricken areas in China until the end of 2020 when the country announced the eradication of extreme poverty. Data analysis was done using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results suggest that opportunity co-creation has a direct positive effect on the entrepreneurial performance of the poor and an indirect positive effect through the chain mediating effect of opportunity beliefs and entrepreneurial behavior. The findings confirm that opportunity co-creation is a critical factor for entrepreneurs in poor areas to overcome the lack of entrepreneurial opportunities and can also contribute to a better understanding of opportunity beliefs and entrepreneurial behavior. Furthermore, these results have important implications for poor entrepreneurs and provide opportunity co-creation solutions for poverty reduction through entrepreneurship.

Why Can Entrepreneurial Involvement Encourage the Entrepreneurship of People Experiencing Poverty?—A Study Using China’s Empirical Data

“…(2001) [19] and Maskell, P. (1998) [20], and referring to some research results of Chen et al (2023) [6], this paper sets up five items to measure the scale of entrepreneurial role models: "The local area lacks talents with modern production and management knowledge", "the local market economy consciousness is not strong", "the local natural resources are rich, a large number of resources have not been fully developed", "the local infrastructure is backward, the transportation is inconvenient", and "the local traditional crafts and folk secret recipes and other intangible cultural heritages are rich". (5) Control variables.…”

“…What factors determine the entrepreneurial performance of people with low incomes? Given that entrepreneurial involvement is critical to entrepreneurship research [6], this research looks for answers by examining entrepreneurial involvement.…”

A study on the factors influencing the vulnerability of women of childbearing age to health poverty in rural western China

“…This study presents findings that demonstrate a noticeable decrease in both the prevalence of poverty and vulnerability to health poverty over a period of time, regardless of the specific poverty threshold used as a benchmark. The decline in both the prevalence of poverty and vulnerability to health poverty observed in this study can be attributed to the implementation of various poverty reduction strategies in China 44 , 45 . Therefore, efforts aimed at alleviating poverty not only reduce extreme poverty but also diminish the likelihood of experiencing poverty due to health-related issues in the future.…”