COVID-19 Pandemic and Household Entrepreneurship in Nigeria: Do Crises Create Necessity-driven and/or Innovative Entrepreneurship?

Abstract

The need for promoting entrepreneurship stems from the efforts to provide long-lasting solutions to the challenges of poverty and unemployment. This becomes even more crucial in worldwide crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only had a momentous effect on businesses and economies but has also driven us to recognize the importance of entrepreneurship. This study explores the combination of important entrepreneurial and household factors that drive the growth of new businesses during and after the crisis. This study applies the Round 2 data from the Nigeria National Longitudinal Phone Survey Phase 2 conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics in collaboration with the World Bank between November 2021 and August 2022. The logistic regression model analyzes how job loss due to the pandemic correlates with the probability of household heads starting and operating an enterprise immediately after the pandemic and the probability for the existing household entrepreneurs to innovate. The findings show that necessity-driven entrepreneurship became effective immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria, and innovation and opportunity recognition were more relevant as success factors during periods of crisis than during regular times. This is because the crisis produced a new set of highly competitive and strategic entrepreneurs that quickly adapted to new situations or conditions through their innovative capacity. Several policy recommendations derived from the study’s empirical findings are discussed in the conclusion section of the article. JEL Classification I1, D1, L26, F44, C35, N97