Research On The Influence Of Online Social Capital On Entrepreneurs' Opportunity Beliefs In Social Media Context

The development of the Internet has changed the way people interact with each other,and the strong interaction they bring also affects entrepreneurs' external communication methods and cognitive processes.With the introduction of Web2.0 technology,people use blogs,microblogs,forums and other new online media to interact.At the same time,an interactive group based on network connection,an online community,is created for entrepreneurs to identify,verify,iterate and develop entrepreneurial opportunities.As a key concept and core proposition in the field of entrepreneurship research,existing studies have defined "valuable entrepreneurial opportunities" more from the perspective of enterprise technology,resource advantages and from the perspective of producers.They think entrepreneurial opportunities are independent of entrepreneurs and the pre-determined results existing in the minds of entrepreneurs.In the era of mobile Internet,the heterogeneous consumer demand,the constantly renovated community ecology as well as the rise of user entrepreneurship,the market and users are regarded as an important driving force for the formation of entrepreneurial opportunities.How to participate in building opportunities and under what conditions to transform this opportunity will become an urgent problem to be solved in the field of entrepreneurship research.Based on the Socially Situated Cognition Theory and Social Capital Theory,this article focuses on the opportunity evaluation process of entrepreneurs' entrepreneurial actions in the context of social media.Using online social capital as a starting point,we explore how entrepreneurs interact with users,and how the external environment and internal motivation affect the formation of entrepreneurs 'beliefs in opportunities.The main research questions are: What is the difference between online social capital and offline social capital in the context of social media? How does it affect the formation of entrepreneurial beliefs? What is the mechanism of action? Through empirical research methods,this paper uses the questionnaire filled by 267 entrepreneurs as a sample,and uses multiple statistical regression methods to draw the following conclusions: First,entrepreneurs interacting with users on social media will form two types of online social capital,namely online bonding social capital and online bridging social capital.The accumulation of online bridging social capital is beneficial to the formation of entrepreneurs 'beliefs in opportunity;second,user perspective plays a part of the intermediary role in online bridging social capitals and opportunity beliefs.Third,the degree of digitization has a positive regulating effect on online bridging social capital and opportunity beliefs.The conclusion of the study has positive significance for enriching the opportunity evaluation process in the context of social interaction,especially the process of opportunity co-creation of demand-side interaction.At the same time,the introduction of "online social capital" in the field of information systems into entrepreneurship research is a beneficial attempt to further interpret and explore the digital entrepreneurship.