How entrepreneur personality affects agrirural entrepreneurial alertness.

• Author: Liang, Chaoyun

INTRODUCTION

Responding to various agricultural development problems (e.g., climate change, natural resource limitations, crop instability, and insufficient distribution channels), governments worldwide, including the government of Taiwan, have formulated relevant policies to aid in restructuring and upscaling the agricultural industry (Bachnik & Szumniak-Samolej, 2018; Chen, Yueh, & Liang, 2016). Based on this trend, Estahbanaty (2013) suggested that guidance must be provided for agrirural entrepreneurship. Agrirural entrepreneurship has become critical for ensuring increased job security, profitability, food productivity, environmental sustainability, and ecological diversity (Liang, Peng, Yao, & Liang, 2015; Niemela, 2015). However, entrepreneurship is not a quality that agrirural workers widely possess (Khan, Khan, Ahmed, & Ali, 2012). Among the various skills required of a successful entrepreneur, accurately identifying and selecting potential opportunities have been identified to be essential; explaining the discovery and development of market opportunities is a critical part of entrepreneurship research (Luna-Reyes, Duran-Encalada, & Bandala, 2013; Omri & Boujelbene, 2015). Particularly at the initial stage of entrepreneurship (which exhibits the highest failure rate), Shane (2005) verified that entrepreneurs are challenged with chaotic market conditions and may encounter impediments at any time, leading to failure. This concept of entrepreneurial alertness (EA) was first introduced by Kirzner (1997) who defined alertness as the 'ability to identify opportunities which are overlooked by others'.

Improving agrirural entrepreneurship has become a worldwide agenda because of discussions involving government support and promotion, sociocultural trends, and the injection of economic capital (Chia & Liang, 2016; Niemela, 2015). Recent meta-analytic studies have reported a significant relationship between personality traits and entrepreneurship, indicating that entrepreneurs are more extroverted, open, and conscientious while being less neurotic and agreeable (e.g., Brandstatter, 2011; Zhao & Seibert, 2006). However, academic research focusing on the influence of entrepreneur personality traits on EA is limited (Shane, Nicolaou, Cherkas, & Spector, 2010), particularly regarding their effect on agrirural EA. Because EA is the core of entrepreneurial development, it is crucial to examine how the personality traits of agrirural entrepreneurs affect their EA.

Because of this research gap, a series of three studies were conducted to develop a measure of EA in agrirural environments that is empirically valid and easy to administer and to analyze how the personality traits of agrirural entrepreneurs affect their EA. The first study was conducted to develop a self-report scale for assessing the EA of agrirural entrepreneurs based on Tang, Kacmar, and Busenitz (2012). The second study was conducted to confirm the factor structure of this scale and test the degree of measurement invariance in the scale across genders. The third study was conducted to test how entrepreneurs' personality traits interact to affect their EA.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Agrirural entrepreneurship

Changes produced by global warming in physical and biological systems worldwide have become the focus of human society during the past two decades. Scholars have advocated that human society must consider the ecological, ethical, and social dimensions of future agricultural practices and the use of rural landscapes (Wilson & Morren, 1990), with agrirural entrepreneurship being a central concern. Responding to the shifting agrirural economy, numerous U.S. rural communities have become more entrepreneurship-oriented, thus exhibiting a healthy acceptance of controversy in allowing risk-taking and a community willingness to tax itself to maintain infrastructures (Flora & Flora, 1990). Recently, the Taiwan government introduced various policies for diversifying agriculture (Chen et al., 2016). These nonconventional operations require an appropriately developed entrepreneurial capacity for recognizing market opportunities and optimizing rural resources.

Rural development is increasingly linked to entrepreneurship. Saxena (2012) indicated that entrepreneurial combinations of rural resources include tourism, sport and recreation facilities, professional and technical training, retailing and wholesaling, industrial applications (engineering, crafts), servicing (consultancy), value-added products (from sources such as meat, milk, and wood), and the possibility of off-farm work. New uses of land enable reducing the intensity of agricultural production (e.g., organic production) (Chia & Liang, 2016; Luna-Reyes et al., 2013). In other words, agrirural entrepreneurs can benefit from opportunities to use local knowledge and experience in exploring rural innovations, evaluating the latest economic developments, and creating new value in rural areas (Sareban, 2012). These entrepreneurs can also benefit from creative problem-solving approaches such as employing high technologies or engaging in global distribution and multinational operations for converting rural risks and environmental constraints into market opportunities (Estahbanaty, 2013).

Entrepreneurial alertness

In recent years, institutions and individuals promoting rural development have come to consider entrepreneurship a strategic development intervention that can accelerate the rural development process (Niemela, 2015; Saxena, 2012). Vigorous entrepreneurial activities offer rural economies many benefits; however, they are also extremely risky, ambiguous, and prone to failure. How entrepreneurs identify opportunities in fast-changing environments and how they engage in entrepreneurial efforts have inevitably become crucial challenges (Luna-Reyes et al., 2013; Omri & Boujelbene, 2015). EA concepts can be used to explain why successful entrepreneurs exhibit an increased sensitivity to and recognize market opportunities that have not yet been exploited by others (Gaglio & Katz, 2001). Such recognition is an ability that agrirural entrepreneurs should develop, which can aid them in forming and actuating future prospects to be used in exploiting the recognized opportunities. Building on McMullen and Shepherd (2006), Tang et al. (2012) determined EA to comprise three dimensions: 'scanning and searching,' 'association and connection,' and 'evaluation and judgment.' This suggestion was applied in the current study.

When entrepreneurs encounter a tangible problem that cannot be resolved using existing organizational systems, they engage in a scanning and searching process, attempting to identify possible solutions. Shepherd and DeTienne (2005) indicatedthat'scanningand searching' enablesentrepreneurs to think logically and unconventionally, aiding them in establishing personal information databases and expanding their base of personal knowledge. The knowledge acquired through scanning and searching can be translated into an entrepreneur's ability to adapt to new situations. This ability undergirds people's absorption and digestion of external information, thus becoming accumulated experiences. McMullen and Shepherd (2006) suggested that these experiences represent the knowledge stored by an entrepreneur, which can be encapsulated within a specific field and used to benefit from lucrative business opportunities.

Entrepreneurs typically realize the potential of their observations by eliminating interference and concentrating on information details (Lumpkin & Lichtenstein, 2005). If the information is incomplete or biased because of incorrect information or a partial omission, associating enables entrepreneurs to adjust their current thinking and adapt to the mismatched information sources before formulating options and making unique connections (Gaglio & Katz, 2001). Entrepreneurs may spontaneously associate irrelevant information with each other by decomposing properties and forming new connections discovered through scanning and searching. Lumpkin and Lichtenstein (2005) explained that entrepreneurs rescanned and researched relevant information within the environment to verify the feasibility of these newly emerging connections.

After the aforementioned processes, entrepreneurs evaluate and judge the gained information pairs to ensure that the formulated ideas match their cognitive framework (Baron, 2006). The extent of evaluation and judgment allows entrepreneurs to discard uncritical messages and enhance their situational awareness. Entrepreneurs may also be required to evaluate, adjust, or reconsider relevant substitutes because additional information can aid them in formulating accurate evaluations and judgments that may lead to new business insights. Dutta and Crossan (2005) suggested that information reappearing most frequently may be more useful in evaluating and judging a framework that adequately explains and matches the new concept, thus uncovering a business opportunity. In other words, 'evaluation and judgment' assists entrepreneurs in assessing their willingness to bear the risk and uncertainty of exploiting a particular opportunity (McMullen & Shepherd, 2006). In summary, for there to be an entrepreneurial opportunity, action must evolve from cues, gathered information, and evaluations (Tang et al., 2012).

Personality traits and entrepreneurial alertness

The five-factor model (FFM) is a widely accepted personality model (Ariani, 2013; Liu, Ip, & Liang, 2018), originated by Goldberg (1992). Thompson (2008) then developed the International English Big-Five Mini-Markers (IEBFMM) and confirmed the invariance of the FFM structure across different cultures. The FFM structure comprises the five dimensions of extroversion, openness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and agreeableness.

Extroversion is associated with sociable, talkative, and self-assured behavior (McCrae & Costa, 1991). People exhibiting...