This editorial provides guidance to authors considering submitting papers with economics content to Journal of Business Venturing. The aim of the journal is to publish high-impact articles on entrepreneurship which combine methodological rigor with comprehensibility (‘accessibility’). Since many economics articles are technically demanding, accessibility to non-technical readers can be a major challenge for authors. This editorial provides some advice for authors of such articles to make their articles more closely targeted on the core interests of the journal's readership and more accessible to non-technical readers. To this end, the editorial suggests that potential authors might benefit from adopting one of the following ‘3R’ strategies: ‘Remove’, ‘Reduce’ or ‘Relate’. It is hoped that this editorial provides useful and actionable guidance for economics researchers submitting theoretical and empirical papers to Journal of Business Venturing.

Building on the insights from observational learning and other social influence research, this study challenges the existing literature that proposes a linear relationship between prior funding and subsequent contributions in the crowdfunding setting. Instead, we propose a U-shaped relationship, illustrating a negative relationship between prior funding and subsequent contributions when funding amounts are small and this relationship becomes positive when prior funding amounts are large. Consistent with the rational herding perspective, we assume that individuals do not mindlessly mimic one others' behaviors, but incorporate quality signals into their decision-making. Signals indicating a high quality project such as video quality, as well as the preparedness and passion of the entrepreneur enhance this U-shaped relationship whereas indicators of situational urgency weaken this relationship. Based on a sample of 11,019 daily observations of 333 Kickstarter projects, we find general support for our hypotheses. Our post hoc experiment further supports the mechanisms underlying the U-shaped relationship. This paper extends our understanding of the relationship between past actions and subsequent behavior, and contributes to the literatures of observational learning, crowdfunding, and visual information. Executive summary We challenge the extant literature that has proposed, but inconsistently documented, a positive effect of prior funding on subsequent crowdfunding contributions. We argue that such inconsistency is due to the lack of integration of insights from other social influence research, such as observational learning, threshold models, and bystander effects. This research has been limited when postulating that crowdfunding backers simply imitate others' actions in order to mitigate uncertainty producing a linear effect, yet such an effect depends on the intensity of others' actions and may be curvilinear. This research overlooks the fact that backers do not merely passively imitate others' behaviors, but incorporate quality signals sent by entrepreneurs to make such decisions. Thus, it is important to account for potential moderators that may influence the complex relationship between prior funding and subsequent contributions. Based on observational learning research and related models, accrued prior funding may be perceived differently by potential backers: individuals may view accrued funding as a sign of a decreased funding need on the part of a campaign's creators, because others are already backing the campaign or, alternatively, they may see it as a cue of high product quality. These conflicting effects may lead to a U-shaped relationship between prior funding and subsequent contributions at a collective level. At low funding levels, prior funding may be negatively associated with subsequent contributions because such levels indicate there is already support, but that the campaign may not be of high quality. At medium levels, prior funding may have no effect on contributions, aside from halfhearted interest of other backers. At high levels, prior funding may be positively related to subsequent contributions as this sends a robust cue of project quality and convinces prospective donors to contribute. Further, we derive a U-shaped relationship which may be moderated by visual media-based quality signals and situational urgency. To test these hypotheses, we conducted two studies. One was a field study of 333 Kickstarter projects, with 11,019 daily observations of crowdfunding activities from mid-February 2013 through mid-April 2013. We used the Kicktraq website to track Kickstarter projects and recruited 390 participants via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to evaluate the video pitches on Kickstarter. Our results suggest a negative relationship between prior funding and subsequent contributions when funding amounts are small. This relationship becomes positive when prior funding amounts are large. Thus, we find a U-shaped relationship between prior funding and subsequent contributions, with an inflection point when prior funding amounts reach between 72% and 80% of the funding goal. This is strengthened in the presence of visual media-based quality signals, such as video quality, as well as the preparedness and passion of the entrepreneur. However, indicators of situational urgency may weaken this U-shaped relationship. We followed up with a post hoc experiment to document the two mechanisms by which prior funding influence subsequent contributions. We found that increases in the prior funding amount increased perceived product quality but decreased perceived urgency. These perceptions were found to jointly influence participants' proposed pledged amounts, supporting an explanation of a complex relationship between prior funding and subsequent contributions. This study is among the first to offer a more complete picture of the relationship between past actions and subsequent behavior under market and institutional constraints (i.e., when market actors observe the censored behaviors of other actors on crowdfunding platforms) and contributes to the literatures of observational learning, crowdfunding, and visual information.

Fear of failure is an important part of the experience of entrepreneurship. Yet past research has mainly investigated fear of failure in entrepreneurship among non entrepreneurs or nascent entrepreneurs and has done so by asking for reactions to hypothetical future failure. This approach to operationalizing the construct limits our capacity for understanding how entrepreneurs actually experience fear of failure while practicing entrepreneurship. In this paper, we conceptualize entrepreneurial fear of failure as a negative affective reaction based in cognitive appraisals of the potential for failure in the uncertain and ambiguous context of entrepreneurship. We use multiple samples to develop and validate a multidimensional, formative measure to assess entrepreneurial fear of failure as a state that is both cognitive and affective in nature. In addition to evidence of the psychometric properties of the new scale across multiple studies, we present a nomological network analysis with respect to measures of theoretically derived psychological outcomes and perceived behavioral tendencies of entrepreneurial fear of failure. We then discuss the theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications of this new measure of entrepreneurial fear of failure with an eye towards use of this scale in future research.

The present research complements extant perspectives of resourcefulness, which assert that resourceful behaviors arise out of responses to environmental constraints, by developing a model illustrating that entrepreneurs self-impose constraints on resource acquisition and deployment for differing reasons. Specifically, we introduce a novel conceptualization of frugality and differentiate it from self-control to develop a set of hypotheses that frugality predicts resource use behaviors based on long-held preferences (e.g., effectuation and bricolage) and self-control predicts resource use behaviors based on known end states or goals (e.g., causation and pre-commitments). After accumulating evidence of reliability and validity for a new measure of frugality contextualized for entrepreneurship research, the results support our self-regulatory theoretical framework. Our study contributes to research on resourcefulness by making multiple theoretical insights, and we outline numerous future research opportunities for applying the construct of frugality to explain entrepreneurial behavior.

This study investigates why and where self-employment is related to higher levels of eudaimonic well-being. We focus on meaningfulness as an important eudaimonic process and subjective vitality as a eudaimonic well-being outcome that is central to entrepreneurs' proactivity. Building on self-determination theory, we posit that self-employment, relative to wage-employment, is a more self-determined and volitional career choice, which enhances the experience of meaningfulness at work and perceptions of work autonomy. In a multi-level study of 22,002 individuals and 16 European countries, meaningfulness at work mediates the relationship between self-employment and subjective vitality and explains this relationship better than work autonomy. We identify moderating effects of context: the societal legitimacy of entrepreneurship in a country affects the choice set of alternative career options that individuals can consider and thus shapes the experience of meaningfulness at work and work autonomy, and thereby indirectly subjective vitality. These findings expand our understanding of eudaimonic well-being, entrepreneurs' work, and the role of context in entrepreneurship and well-being research. They complement existing research on hedonic well-being of entrepreneurs and extend the scarce literature on their eudaimonic well-being.