Consumption, production, and entrepreneurship in the time of coronavirus: A business perspective of the pandemic

This book examines the impact of the continuing COVID-19 crisis on consumers and businesses. With stay-at-home orders and social distancing measures mandated by governments worldwide, businesses have made significant adjustments to adapt to the sudden changes caused by the pandemic. The book aims to understand what settling and thriving in the "new normal" have meant for businesses around the world. This book is divided into sections on production, consumption, and entrepreneurship and explores how consumer psychology has changed while also evaluating new digital business opportunities afforded by the pandemic. By bringing together psychology and marketing scholars, this interdisciplinary book will inform research on how businesses adapt to crises. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022. All rights reserved.

Entrepreneurial efforts and opportunity costs: evidence from twitch streamers

With the rise of digital platforms, individuals' possibilities to generate income have increased drastically. In this context, we present digital content creation as a form of (digital) entrepreneurship that is characterized by potentially high but also uncertain revenues. As the cost structure of content creation mostly depends on opportunity costs, it stands in contrast to other popular platform-work options. We demonstrate how a stark and unexpected reduction in opportunity costs affects the actual decision to produce digital content. Exploiting the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we measure how individuals (streamers) who operate on a live streaming platform, respond to a sudden change in external factors while accounting for individual differences in initial conditions. We observe intensified efforts across the spectrum of streamers and find particularly strong reactions from newcomer streamers. We further show that only the most successful newcomers sustain their increased efforts even when opportunity costs start to rise again. Our results are consistent with the initial assumption that an individual's decision on taking up or intensifying entrepreneurial efforts on digital platforms is strongly affected by their opportunity costs. The results further imply that there is a large potential in individuals who might be willing to become entrepreneurs but are restricted by external conditions. As platform-based digital entrepreneurship offers high flexibility and very low entry barriers, measures for lowering opportunity costs could therefore help to unleash this potential. To maintain a steady influx of new talents, content platforms should increase their support for smaller creators and policymakers should provide easily accessible platforms to ease the way into entrepreneurship for these individuals. © 2023, The Author(s).

Digital economic activity and resilience for metros and small businesses during Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic had an unequal impact across businesses and communities and rapidly accelerated digital trends in the economy. What role, then, did website use play in community resilience and small business outcomes? This article examines a new source of population data on domain name hosts to provide a unique measure of digital economic activity within communities. Seventy-five percent are commercial, including online-only, brick-and-mortar, small, and microbusinesses. With geolocated data on 20 million US domain name hosts, we investigate how their density (per 100 people) affected economic outcomes in the nation's largest metros during the pandemic. Using monthly time series data for the 50 largest metropolitan areas, the domain host data is merged with the US Census Small Business Pulse Surveys and Chetty et al.'s Opportunity Insights data. Results indicate metros with higher concentrations of businesses with an online presence experienced more positive economic perceptions and outcomes from April to December 2020. This high-frequency, granular data on digital economic activity suggests that digitally enabled small and microbusinesses played an important role in local economic resilience and demonstrates how commercial data can be used to generate new insights in a fast-changing environment.Plain English SummaryNew data show websites were a resource for small business and community resilience in Covid-19. While some studies have shown how digital technologies helped businesses during the pandemic, little research has examined how website use during this time affected communities and their small businesses. Data on the number of domain name hosts (per 100 people) provides a measure of the prevalence of website use in a community. Seventy-five percent of these domain name sites are commercial, primarily small, and microbusinesses. We examine economic outcomes for the 50 largest metros from April to December 2020, including credit and debit card spending, small business revenues and openings, and the perceptions of small business owners. With monthly data and across multiple measures, we find that this digital economic activity positively affected the resilience of communities and small businesses. These findings suggest that policies for an inclusive and effective recovery should consider support for digital skills and effective website use for small and microbusinesses.

Winds of change due to global lockdowns: Refreshing digital social entrepreneurship research paradigm

Digital technologies have a significant potential for collaboration, designing, and implementing better business initiatives. COVID-19 global lockdowns have increased the emergence of the Digital Social Entrepreneurship (DSE) phenomenon, which has been key in responding to social needs using digital technologies. The DSE scholarly discussion has been limited to a few studies. Therefore, little is known about theoretical foundations that explain the intersection between digital, social, and entrepreneurship. Based on an integrative literature review and a thematic case study, this study theorizes the micro-foundations of digital-social value-creation and explores the flourishment of the DSE phenomenon during/after the global lockdowns. Our findings contribute to the literature by extending the DSE definition and identifying the fostering (micro, meso, and macro) conditions involved in the digital-social value-creation process. Several implications emerged from the DSE learning, adaptation, and co-creation strategies/practices. © 2023 Elsevier Inc.

The causal exploration of digital entrepreneurial psychological capital configurations based on fsQCA

The COVID-19 brings about a great quantity of digital entrepreneurs in China. In the fierce competition, positive psychological capital can better help them adjust emotions, cognition and behavior. However, little is known of how to improve the digital entrepreneurial psychological capital (DEPC). To fill this gap, this paper explored the configurations to promote DEPC. Based on the key psychological resources theory, a configurational framework which encompasses the antecedent conditions of self-regulation, entrepreneurial learning, family support and entrepreneurial environment is proposed. Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze the survey data of 238 digital entrepreneurs in China, specifically, there are 4 recipes for resulting in high DEPC and 5 for not-high DEPC. The results reveal that the changes of DEPC are mainly caused by the synergy of multi-factors. In order to enhance DEPC, digital entrepreneurs should seek support from family members actively;build self-regulated entrepreneurial learning (SREL) capabilities or entrepreneurial experience learning capabilities;and adjust promoting regulatory focus to a lower level or accumulate the experience of digital entrepreneurship in a good entrepreneurial environment. Overall, this work highlights the approaches to high DEPC. Theoretically, it contributes to the literature on positive organizational behavior by confirming the configurational roles of DEPC;practically, it provides beneficial implications for the development of DEPC, which helps digital entrepreneurs face the crisis better in VUCA environment.

The Value Chain Configuration in the Digital Entrepreneurship Age: The Paradoxical Role of Digital Technologies

This chapter analyzes the configuration of global value chains in the digital entrepreneurship age by clarifying past contributions, examining work resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, and outlining suggestions for future research. First, we provide a conceptual framework to understand how digitalization has driven its transformation. Specifically, we discuss the main changes in the slicing of value chain activities, the control and location decisions of these activities, and the paradoxical role played by digital technologies in shaping the way entrepreneurs organize them. In doing this, we highlight the location paradox, which rests on the idea that digital technologies help firms expand their geographical scope and reduce co-ordination costs in large and dispersed networks (which favors offshoring), while reducing the importance of the location of activities and shortening supply chains (which favors reshoring). Second, we critically review the research on value chain configurations that has appeared because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Lastly, we discuss some promising areas of research that could yield insights that will advance our understanding of value chain configurations in the digital entrepreneurship age. © 2023, The Author(s).

Digital economic activity and resilience for metros and small businesses during Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic had an unequal impact across businesses and communities and rapidly accelerated digital trends in the economy. What role, then, did website use play in community resilience and small business outcomes? This article examines a new source of population data on domain name hosts to provide a unique measure of digital economic activity within communities. Seventy-five percent are commercial, including online-only, brick-and-mortar, small, and microbusinesses. With geolocated data on 20 million US domain name hosts, we investigate how their density (per 100 people) affected economic outcomes in the nation's largest metros during the pandemic. Using monthly time series data for the 50 largest metropolitan areas, the domain host data is merged with the US Census Small Business Pulse Surveys and Chetty et al.'s Opportunity Insights data. Results indicate metros with higher concentrations of businesses with an online presence experienced more positive economic perceptions and outcomes from April to December 2020. This high-frequency, granular data on digital economic activity suggests that digitally enabled small and microbusinesses played an important role in local economic resilience and demonstrates how commercial data can be used to generate new insights in a fast-changing environment. Plain English Summary New data show websites were a resource for small business and community resilience in Covid-19. While some studies have shown how digital technologies helped businesses during the pandemic, little research has examined how website use during this time affected communities and their small businesses. Data on the number of domain name hosts (per 100 people) provides a measure of the prevalence of website use in a community. Seventy-five percent of these domain name sites are commercial, primarily small, and microbusinesses. We examine economic outcomes for the 50 largest metros from April to December 2020, including credit and debit card spending, small business revenues and openings, and the perceptions of small business owners. With monthly data and across multiple measures, we find that this digital economic activity positively affected the resilience of communities and small businesses. These findings suggest that policies for an inclusive and effective recovery should consider support for digital skills and effective website use for small and microbusinesses.

The Effect of Digital Entrepreneurship on Creative Cities: In Pandemic Covid-19 Era

The purpose of this study is to find out how the influence of digital entrepreneurship on creative cities in the current Covid-19 pandemic conditions, the research was conducted in the city of Bandung, Indonesia, which is one of the cities in the world with the status of a creative city. The analysis in this study uses three dimensions of digital entrepreneurship variables, namely entrepreneur, entrepreneurship process, and ecosystem, as well as creative city variables. This research is based on a quantitative approach with a sample of 314 creative industry players in the city of Bandung. The statistical method used to test the hypothesis in this study is Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) through the Partial Least Square (PLS) v3.0 approach. The research findings show that entrepreneurs have a significant effect on creative cities, with a contribution of 19.4%, the Entrepreneurship process has a significant effect on creative cities, with a contribution of 29.2%, and Ecosystems have a significant effect on creative cities, with a contribution of 28.6%. Overall, the condition of Digital Entrepreneurship has a significant effect on supporting the creative city of Bandung, with a total contribution of 77.2% which is dominated by the entrepreneurship process while the remaining 22.8% is the influence of other factors not examined. From the value of the contribution of the entrepreneurship process that dominates, it can be seen that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has created new habits from creative industry players in the City of Bandung by maximizing the use of technology and internet networks, without being limited by space that can be accessed by everyone, this is what changes business. from offline to online, so digital entrepreneurship has a big impact on the creative industry to support the status of a creative city owned by the city of Bandung. Research on the role and interaction of creative economy stakeholders involved in the digital entrepreneurship ecosystem in supporting creative cities is a suggestion for further research © 2022. Specialusis Ugdymas.All Rights Reserved

A Conceptual Paper on the Role of Technologies in SMEs Islamabad Pakistan

This study aims to explore the role of technology on the organizational performance of SMEs in Islamabad, Pakistan during the ravages of Covid 19 pandemic. It has been widely accepted that the proper adoption of digitalization not only helpful to cushion the impact of the said pandemic but it also aids SMEs to stay afloat and gains profits. SMEs need to equip themselves with up-to-date technology to weather adversaries in their business. Compare to other developing countries, Pakistani SMEs still far behind in leveraging digitalization. There is a dire need for them to practice and embrace digitalization in entrepreneurship to improve their performances. The present study will find out the effects of technology on the organizational performance of SMEs in Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan and float a conceptual model. A conceptual framework, which was derived from the OECD, will facilitate the investigation. Realising the data in paramount important and urgently needed, the nature of this study will be a cross-sectional and quantitative. The key technologies including digitalization will be employed as predictors and organizational performance will be regressed as predicted variable. The findings of this study would be instructive, demanding SMEs and other related stakeholders to make a concerted effort to plan and executive viable strategies to ensure SMEs which provided the largest employability in Pakistan can successfully embrace technologies to ensure the highest level of their performance. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Digital Entrepreneurship and Creative Industries in Tourism: A Research Agenda

Recently, digital entrepreneurship and creative industries in tourism have been emerging strongly, possibly as a result of the global pandemic of the last two years. Their growth in the last decade has been due to the penetration of technology into the daily life of the tourist and the desire for tours that combine intangible value and a differentiated experience. This paper presents the findings of a research agenda that aims to identify key factors and research dimensions in the adoption of digital entrepreneurship and the creative industries in tourism. The study includes a critical analysis based on a literature review through a filtered search method of statistical information from 20 relevant scientific publications listed in the Scopus and Google Scholar databases. Additionally, this research addresses research gaps and recommends directions for future research. Finally, the conclusions are presented.

Spatial distancing and social closeness: The work of creative professionals during the pandemic

As a complete recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic crisis does not seem possible in the near future, the survival of many creative professions is under threat in Russia and other countries. Strict anti-pandemic measures were introduced in Moscow at the end of March 2020 and lasted for a little more than two months. One of the main requirements was to work from home and go outside as rarely as possible. Most Russian creative professionals such as photographers, makeup artists, actors, musi-cians, stand-up comedians and television hosts found themselves in very unfamiliar conditions since their work presumes physical contact with other people. However, even artists who usually work alone like jewellers or designers met with came across practical and psychological difficulties as well and had to adapt to the new order. This research focuses on two examples of creative work during the COVID-19 pandemic: Russian jewellery designer Katia Rabey’s project ‘Quarantine Rings’ and the participation of Russian makeup artist Yulia Rada in virtual commercial photo-shoots. I am interested in how the artists perceived the changes introduced as a result of the pandemic and how these changes emphasized the digital side of contemporary creative labour. Despite the differences in the challenges that the two artists met, both of them stressed the importance of social closeness. © 2020 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.

Social media's impact on the empowerment of women and youth male entrepreneurs in Egypt

Purpose>This study aims to examine the impact of social media (SM) on the creation of digital entrepreneurship by female (irrespective of age) and youth male (aged 18–29 years) entrepreneurs, investigate if SM empowers those entrepreneurs and compare the empowerment characteristics between female and youth male entrepreneurs before and after starting their businesses.Design/methodology/approach>Self-assessment questionnaires were collected from a sample of 408 Egyptian female and youth male digital entrepreneurs from Greater Cairo, whose businesses had been operating for more than one year.Findings>The research showed the following four results: Of the surveyed entrepreneurs, 95% asserted that without SM, they would not have started their businesses. Female and youth male entrepreneurs are empowered both on personal and relational levels, and women’s empowerment is more evident in the latter. Before digital entrepreneurship, youth males have significantly higher averages than female entrepreneurs in almost all empowerment characteristics, whereas after digital entrepreneurship, female entrepreneurs have significantly higher averages in making decisions related to investment, personal education and personal health, as well as those of other household members. Female entrepreneurs are relatively more empowered than youth males after digital entrepreneurship when each group is compared with its initial status.Originality/value>This study’s originality stems from using a large sample of entrepreneurs, including youth males, not just females;employing a more structured, comprehensive measure of empowerment than found in the literature because it included the rarely used psychological dimension;considering more than one SM tool and comparing empowerment of females to that of youth males.

THE EFFECT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON YOUTH'S CAREER ASSESSMENTS AND DIGITAL ENTREPRENEURAL INTENTIONS: A QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH

The purpose of this study is to compare the situation before and during the COVID-19 global pandemic, which deeply affected the world and caused significant changes in working life, to reveal the career assessment of young people and the changes in digital entrepreneurship intentions with the increase in the importance and prominence of digital technologies. The data within the scope of the research were obtained from 407 students studying at four different faculties of Akdeniz University. The results of the research showed that the career assessment of young people in the pre-COVID-19 period were not related to digital entrepreneurship intentions, but that career assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic were weakly related to digital entrepreneurship intention. On the other hand, while there was no significant difference between the career assessment of young people regarding the pre-COVID-19 period and the career assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was found that there was a significant difference in digital entrepreneurship intentions. Path analysis conducted with the help of structural equation modeling showed that individual career assessments of young people.

The Effects of Cross-Border E-Commerce Platforms on Transnational Digital Entrepreneurship: Case Studies in the Chinese Immigrant Community

This research examines the important concept of transnational digital entrepreneurship (TDE). The paper integrates the host and home country entrepreneurial ecosystems with the digital ecosystem to the framework of the transnational digital entrepreneurial ecosystem. The authors argue that cross-border e-commerce platforms provide critical foundations in the digital entrepreneurial ecosystem. Entrepreneurs who count on this ecosystem are defined as transnational digital entrepreneurs. Interview data were dissected for the purpose of case studies to make understanding from 12 Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs living in Australia and New Zealand. The results of the data analysis reveal that cross-border entrepreneurs are in actual fact relying on the significant framework of the transnational digital ecosystem. Cross-border e-commerce platforms not only play a bridging role between home and host country ecosystems but provide entrepreneurial capital as digital ecosystem promised.

Digital Entrepreneurship: Public Perception of Barriers, Drivers, and Future

The widespread access to the Internet has undoubtedly changed the way businesses handle their processes and interact with their customers. With the surge of new devices, business models, technologies, and platforms, alongside social media growth and innovative advertising, it became easier to transition from employment to entrepreneurship. The paper aims to assess the public perception of digital entrepreneurship, with a focus on its barriers, drivers, and expectations for the future. The results show that there is a slight agreement with a digital business being easier to establish compared with a traditional one. The driving forces behind starting a digital business are recognized, and the digital environment is considered essential for business growth in the following years. With some exceptions, there are no significant differences between age groups, genders, relationship statuses, levels of education, and/or occupations when rating the barriers, drivers, and expectations for the future of digital entrepreneurship.

Has Covid-19 accelerated opportunities for digital entrepreneurship? An Indian perspective.

Covid-19 has challenged many businesses to orient themselves towards digital solutions for their survival. Due to the rising digital wave during Covid-19, there has been a plethora of opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs to enter the market. Hence, this study focuses on understanding emerging areas and technologies for digital entrepreneurship. This study adopted a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews through the lens of the diffusion of innovations theory. A total of 23 entrepreneurs responded and presented their views on Covid-19-induced opportunities for digital entrepreneurship. A structured process of open, axial, and selective coding was adopted for the thematic analysis. The study presents a framework based on four promising propositions. Results of the thematic analysis indicate the emergence of digital entrepreneurship opportunities in technology (EdTech, FinTech, cybersecurity), healthcare (diagnostics, virtual care, fitness), entertainment (over the top, gaming, social media), and e-commerce (contactless delivery, payment methods, augmented reality). In this study, entrepreneurs presented their views based on their experience with the platform or technology they operated. To this end, the present study offers implications both for scholars and entrepreneurs working in and aspiring to digital entrepreneurship along with future scope of research.