An attention-based perspective on how climate impact affects opportunity entrepreneurship

Climate impact, which refers to the losses resulting from climate change-related events, is one of the most pressing challenges for societies worldwide. Contributing to the climate impact–entrepreneurship nexus, we assess how climate impact affects individual engagement in opportunity entrepreneurship. Drawing on the attention-based view (ABV) and on socio-cognitive theory (SCT), we hypothesize that climate impact increases opportunity entrepreneurship, and that this effect is moderated by individuals’ socio-cognitive characteristics. Combining data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and the Climate Risk Index (CRI), we conduct a multilevel analysis that involves 964,440 individuals from 94 countries from 2010 to 2018. In support of our hypotheses, our results suggest that climate impact is positively related to engagement in opportunity entrepreneurship. We also find that this association is negatively moderated by entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial alertness, and positively by entrepreneurial fear of failure. We conclude by discussing the implications of our attention-based understanding of climate impact as a catalyst for opportunity entrepreneurship.