The Impact Of Internet Embeddedness On Enterpreneurial Opportunity Identification

With the development and popularity of Internet, more and more entrepreneurs take advantage of Internet to do business. Internet has significant influence on entrepreneurship through the following three aspects:firstly, it provides a platform for communication and exhibition, thus decreasing trading expenses; secondly, it promotes information acquiration and resources sharing between individuals and groups; thirdly, it creates e-business model in which entrepreneurs provide goods of service through Internent. Based on this, we created the concept of "Internet Embeddedness" to describe the complicated relationship between entrepreneurial behaviors and Internet, and explored the process how entrepreneurial alertness and social capital influence entrepreneurial opportunity identification.Based on questionnaires investigation of200subjects, this study drew the following five conclusions:(1) The concept of Internet embeddedness is a three-dimension variable, which includes link, fit and sacrifice.(2) Internet embeddedness is in a positive relationship with social capital.(3) Social capital is positive with entrepreneurial opportunity identification.(4) Social capital is founded a mediator in the relationship between Internet embeddedness and entrepreneurial opportunity identification.(5) Entrepreneurial alertness partially moderates the relationship between Internet embeddedness and social capital.There are mainly two innovations in this study.(1) Since the significant relationship between Internet and entrepreneurial behavior, we created the concept of Internet embeddedness to explore the mechanism between these two variables.(2) This study supported the opinion that both social capital and entrepreneurial alertness take function in the process that Internet embeddedness influences entrepreneurial opportunity identification. This study will not only lay the foundation for future relative research on entrepreneurial behavior and activities based on Internet, but also provide valuable reference for the society and government to encourage entrepreneurship.