‘Does Confidence Matter?’: Impact of Entrepreneurs’ Confidence on Fear of Failure

Abstract

Obstacles and threats are common occurrences for entrepreneurs in their journey of starting and surviving a venture. These challenges often induce a fear of failure in entrepreneurs, sometimes affecting their mental well-being. Although coping literature lists several explicit mechanisms to mitigate the adverse impact of entrepreneurial fear of failure, empirical evidence suggesting the role of some intrinsic typical entrepreneurial characteristics such as overconfidence and optimism is missing from the extant knowledge bank. Our study joins those missing links by studying the role of entrepreneurs’ confidence elements—overconfidence and optimism in entrepreneurial fear of failure. We adopted stress appraisal theory and experience sampling methodology to explore the hypothesized relations. We triangulate our results with semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs. Our findings reveal the positive side of entrepreneurs’ confidence in dealing with stress and fear of failure. Therefore, we contribute to the entrepreneurial well-being literature and provide a reason for practicing entrepreneurs to build on their confidence.