The Empirical Study Of The Influence Of Personality Traits, Social Capital, Prior Knowledge And Opportunity Alertness On Business Angels' Capital Alertness

According to the research report of GEM (2009), total informal investment in China amounted to 11.3% of its GDP, which is considerably higher than in any other investigated country. Business angel as a primary source of risk capital play a more and more important role in the formation of new business ventures (Wetzel,1983). But because China lies in the period of its dynamic economic transformation, the fast changes of market bring plentiful investment opportunities and increase decision-making risks at the same time. Therefore, it is very meaningful for us to study the key factors of business angels'capital alertness and their characteristics, which are instructive to steer successful investment, motivate the enthusiasm of potential angels, promote well cooperation between business angel and entrepreneur.According to prospect theory of investment decision, we put forward the definition of "capital alertness" to measure if the yields of angels' investments have met their prospect. And we define the capability of identify and grasp the valuable investment opportunity as capital alertness. Opportunity recognition is the very important beginning for new venture to realize capital appreciation, which is influenced by angels'investment motivation, special skill and other factors, such as investment environment.This research adopts the method of opportunity identification in entrepreneurial research and the knowledge of psychology, sociology, anthroponomy and finances to find out the factors which influence angels'capital alertness through theoretical and empirical study. We will analysis the factors which influence angels'capital alertness based on the questionnaire investigation data, which overcome data-lacking in the past research.We use the SPSS for data manipulation and apply principal factor analysis for variables extraction, use ANVOA to find the key influential factors of business angels'capital alertness, then carry out discriminant analysis to establish mathematical model of capital alertness on the respective level and adopt path analysis to depict the microcosmic mechanism of angels'capital alertness case and effect model. The results display prior knowledge and opportunity alertness are the major factors of angels'investments propensities, meanwhile the opportunity alertness is mediator. Finally, according to results of the empirical analysis, suggestions are proposed, including the suggestion of innovation, research limitations and future research direction of the outlook. This research conclusions and recommendations have certain reference for investors, venture capital institution and entrepreneurs.