The Influence Of "Proud" Emotion On Entrepreneurial Opportunity Exploitation

The entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation is a major component in the venturing process,influenced by external factors such as the probability of success,profit,and other opportunity characters,as well as influenced by internal factors such as cognition,personality,emotion and other personality characteristics.Mitchell(2007)proposed that research on the influences of mood on entrepreneurship should be paid attention to.But the effects of emotional states on entrepreneurship are relatively less studied empirically.Taking perspectives from the appraisal-tendency framework,the affect-as-information theory and the affective processing theory,the current study examined the influence of “proud” emotion on entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation.It attempts to provide a theoretical guidance to schools and related organizations regarding the entrepreneurship education.This study used “Event Recall” to induce proud mood and used the General Positive Emotion Scale and Tracy Proud Mood Scale to measure the mood.Entrepreneurial opportunities exploitation was assessed using Welpe et.al.(2012)experimental paradigm and measurement.Results showed that:(1)emotional pride increased entrepreneurial opportunities exploitation;(2)pride increased entrepreneurial opportunities exploitation through the mediation of entrepreneurial opportunity evaluation;(3)The relationship among emotional pride,opportunities evaluation and exploitation was further partially mediated by the possibility of success.Emotional pride only influenced the entrepreneurial opportunities exploitation through the impact of opportunities evaluation,when the probability of success is low.