Toward a Theory of Entrepreneurial Action in Blockchain: Approach and Avoidance

Blockchain is a relatively new way to engage in entrepreneurship. Despite the frenzy on blockchain yet the stigma that tainted it, research on “blockchain entrepreneurship” has only recently entered scholarly realms and we know very little about why and how individuals are attracted to blockchain entrepreneurial opportunities and act on them. By embracing the approach-avoidance perspectives under the framework of the theory of entrepreneurial action, we conducted two surveys on blockchain entrepreneurship that examined the opportunity recognition-feasibility-desirability and start-up motivation-evaluation-action toward blockchain (n=492 and n=500) using samples from the United States. Overall, the results underlined the centrality of factors such as lead usership, affordance logic, perceived stigma, entrepreneurial imaginativeness as predictors of blockchain entrepreneurship self-efficacy and perceived legitimacy of blockchain which in turn predicted opportunity recognition, feasibility, desirability. Results also confirmed the importance technology neophobia, perceived stigma, and technology laggardness as predictors of perceived blockchain legitimacy, which in turn predicted blockchain start-up motivation-evaluation-action. Our study makes a novel contribution to the emerging field of blockchain entrepreneurship by confirming the mechanisms of approach/avoidance-based entrepreneurial action in blockchain and their underlying factors.