Li Yunjian, Chen Hongchuan, Liu Chunzhen, Liu Hong
School of Management, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Oct 19;13:1044011. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1044011. eCollection 2022.
The entrepreneurial firms may be more vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the entrepreneurs of entrepreneurial firms are also threatened by the revenues decline and business failure, which vehemently affect their well-being. The mental health of the entrepreneur decides whether the entrepreneurial firms can make the right decision, which is related to the healthy development of the entrepreneurial firms. Based on the event system theory and the cognitive appraisal theory, this paper aims to explore the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on the entrepreneur anxiety, and the threat perception and performance pressure are introduced to investigate the mediating mechanism and boundary of this effect. Using the simple random sampling to obtain questionnaire survey data, 168 entrepreneurs of entrepreneurial firms have participated in the empirical study, and the research results are as follows. First, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly positively affects entrepreneur anxiety. Second, the entrepreneur threat perception plays a mediating role between the COVID-19 pandemic and the entrepreneur anxiety, which means the COVID-19 pandemic can enhance the external threat perception of entrepreneurs, and then affect the entrepreneur anxiety. Third, the positive effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the entrepreneur anxiety is strengthened by the entrepreneur performance pressure, while the positive effect of entrepreneur threat perception on entrepreneur anxiety is weakened by the entrepreneur performance pressure. The above findings are helpful to explore the mechanism of the COVID-19 pandemic and other critical crisis events on entrepreneurs' mental health from the new perspective of cognitive appraisal theory and event system theory, filling the research gaps between the COVID-19 pandemic and entrepreneur anxiety. Besides, this study broadens the applied range of the cognitive appraisal theory and the event system theory in the fields of crisis situations and entrepreneur research, and enriches the research outputs. Furthermore, this study will help provide a new theoretical analysis insight for the related research on how the COVID-19 pandemic affects entrepreneurs' psychology, and further deepen researchers to understand the mechanism of entrepreneur anxiety under the COVID-19 pandemic, providing theoretical inspirations for reducing entrepreneur anxiety. What's more, this study finds that individual pressure can affect their cognitive appraisal, which means that future research should take the pressure influential mechanism into consideration in the process of exploring "external stimulus--cognitive appraisal--emotional response," further expanding the theoretical model of cognitive appraisal proposed from the perspective of pressure.
创业型企业可能更容易受到新冠疫情的影响，创业型企业的企业家也受到收入下降和企业倒闭的威胁，这强烈影响着他们的幸福感。企业家的心理健康决定了创业型企业能否做出正确决策，这与创业型企业的健康发展相关。基于事件系统理论和认知评价理论，本文旨在探讨新冠疫情对企业家焦虑的影响，并引入威胁感知和绩效压力来研究这种影响的中介机制和边界条件。采用简单随机抽样获取问卷调查数据，168位创业型企业的企业家参与了实证研究，研究结果如下。第一，新冠疫情对企业家焦虑有显著的正向影响。第二，企业家威胁感知在新冠疫情与企业家焦虑之间起中介作用，这意味着新冠疫情会增强企业家的外部威胁感知，进而影响企业家焦虑。第三，企业家绩效压力增强了新冠疫情对企业家焦虑的正向影响，而企业家绩效压力削弱了企业家威胁感知对企业家焦虑的正向影响。上述研究结果有助于从认知评价理论和事件系统理论的新视角，探索新冠疫情及其他重大危机事件对企业家心理健康的影响机制，填补新冠疫情与企业家焦虑之间的研究空白。此外，本研究拓宽了认知评价理论和事件系统理论在危机情境和企业家研究领域的应用范围，丰富了研究成果。再者，本研究将有助于为新冠疫情如何影响企业家心理的相关研究提供新的理论分析视角，并进一步深化研究者对新冠疫情下企业家焦虑机制的理解，为减轻企业家焦虑提供理论启示。更重要的是，本研究发现个体压力会影响其认知评价，这意味着未来研究在探索“外部刺激—认知评价—情绪反应”过程中应考虑压力影响机制，进一步拓展从压力视角提出的认知评价理论模型。
