Entrepreneurial distance: A novel evaluation tool of entrepreneurial intention

Entrepreneurship and new business creation drive economic growth and employment generation. In this study we have developed a new way to evaluate entrepreneurial intention by looking at the respondents’ opinion towards entrepreneurs and their own self-reported abilities. We have coined this methodology as the entrepreneurial distance. This study is based in an international sample of 264 respondents gathered through an online questionnaire. The results show that the different entrepreneurial distances (positive, negative, and zero) follow the distributions we have hypothesized. Additionally, across the countries studied, entrepreneurs are perceived to be dynamic, innovative, willing to take risks, having a good entrepreneurial vision and being able to create jobs. These findings have important implications for educators and policy makers to help in the promotion of entrepreneurship.


INTRODUCTION
Entrepreneurship is an important driver for economic growth (Zahra, 1999), through bringing innovation to the market and creating jobs (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000).Countries thus want to increase the rate of entrepreneurship to promote economic and social development (Peng et al., 2012).Therefore, understanding which are the most important attributes and skills of entrepreneurs can enhance the level of entrepreneurship by promoting these skills.Entrepreneurial intention is considered to be the best predictor of future entrepreneurial behaviour (Krueger et al., 2000), and thus, accurate evaluation tools of entrepreneurial intention are important.

Image of entrepreneurs
The purpose of our study is to understand if entrepreneurs around the world have mutual characteristics that define them, or if contrarily, entrepreneurs differ by country.We were interested to see how the image of entrepreneurs varied across the countries studied: Japan, Spain, United States (US) and the multi-national sample (composed by grouping 28 other countries' responses).
According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM consortium, 2014), conducive entrepreneurial cultures tend to have weak uncertainty avoidance, low power distance, tend to be masculine, individualistic, achievement-oriented, and universalistic (Hofstede, 2001).The three primary countries we are considering in our study: United States, Japan and Spain, show different levels in the key indicators considered conducive to entrepreneurship (GEM consortium, 2014).According to GEM (GEM consortium, 2014), United States shows the most conducive indicators whilst Japan appears to have the least conducive characteristics and Spain shows an intermediate position.
Hypothesis 1 (H1): Countries with more conducive entre-preneurial culture will have a more positive perception of entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurial distance
Additionally, we were interested in evaluating the respondents own perception of the qualities they possess in first person, as a "stakeholder", As well as the qualities they thought were important traits of entrepreneurs, in third person, as a "spectator".We then analyze if their responses have statistically significant differences on the respondent's entrepreneurial intention.To measure the difference between the "spectator" and "stakeholder" roles, for each of the respondents we calculated what we coined the Entrepreneurial Distance.
The items used can be found on Table 1.All answers were measured in a 5-point Likert Scale.We used the robust items found to describe entrepreneur's characteristics (Table 5) and modified them to refer to the first person (Table 1).It is then possible to calculate the difference between both corresponding responses, for each respondent.
The Entrepreneurial Distance is the sum of the differences between each of the four pairs of items.Following the example above, this distance could be positive, negative or zero, with different implications.

Zero distance
In case of a zero "entrepreneurial distance", we can argue there is a "match" between the characteristics that the respondents believe are necessary or not to become an entrepreneur with the respondent's own self-reported abilities.In a sense, if a respondent strongly agrees with the item: "entrepreneurs are dynamic people" (value: 5), and strongly agrees with the item: "I am a dynamic person" (value: 5), the difference between the two items will be 0 (5 -5 = 0).Respondents with a "matching" entrepreneurial distance will possess the same characteristics as they believe are important for entrepreneurs and thus, will have a higher tendency to become entrepreneurs.We will consider a "match" case to occur, when the distance (sum of four differences) is between -1 and 1.

Hypothesis 2 (H 2 ):
There will be a positive correlation between a match in entrepreneurial distance and entrepreneurial intention.

Positive distance
In case of a positive or negative entrepreneurial distance, we can argue that there is a mismatch between the traits that the respondents believe are necessary or not to become an entrepreneur with their own self-reported abilities, with different implication in each case.
If the "entrepreneurial distance" is positive, the respondent will believe a characteristic is important to become an entrepreneur, but he does not possess it.As an example, if a respondent strongly agrees with the item: "Entrepreneurs are dynamic people" (value: 5), and strongly disagrees with the item: "I am a dynamic person" (value: 1), the difference between the two items will be 4 (5 -1 = 4).The respondent then lacks, in his opinion, a characteristic necessary to become an entrepreneur.A "positive distance" case will occur, when the sum of the four differences is 2 or above.
Hypothesis 3 (H 3 ): There will be a negative correlation between a positive entrepreneurial distance and entrepreneurial intention.

Negative distance
In the opposite case, if the entrepreneurial distance is negative, the respondent will believe a characteristic is not important to become an entrepreneur, but he does possess it.As an example, if a respondent strongly disagrees with the item: "Entrepreneurs are dynamic people" (value: 1), and strongly agrees with the item: "I am a dynamic person" (value: 5), the difference between the two items will be -4 (1 -5 = -4).All items used have a positive connotation, being all desirable qualities to have.Therefore, we can argue that respondents with a negative distance, will have high self-esteem and selfconfidence and might therefore be more likely to become an entrepreneur.A "negative distance" case will occur, when the sum of the four distances is -2 or below.
Hypothesis 4 (H 4 ): There will be a positive correlation between a negative entrepreneurial distance and entrepreneurial intention.

METHODS
Our survey instrument was designed to discover which are the most important qualities that entrepreneurs possess.Additionally, we

Entrepreneur's characteristics
Self characteristics "Entrepreneurs are dynamic people" = E1 "I am a dynamic person" = S1 "Entrepreneurs are very innovative" = E2 "I am very innovative" = S2 "Entrepreneurs are able and willing to take risks" = E3 "I am able and willing to take risks" = S3 "Entrepreneurs have a good entrepreneurial vision" = E4 "I have a good entrepreneurial vision" = S4  (Veciana et al., 2005) (Table 3).The questionnaire was developed in English and later translated into Japanese and Spanish from the original version.Our survey instrument measured the degree of agreement of respondents to statements related to the image of entrepreneurs using a five point Likert scale (1: strongly disagree, 2: disagree, 3: neither agree nor disagree, 4: agree, and 5: strongly agree).
For each of the statements, we then compared the distribution of responses across countries, through cross-tabulation analysis using SPSS.We grouped responses agree with strongly agree and disagree with strongly disagree and compared the distribution of the two groups.Our sample included 264 responses, obtaining a response rate of 32.6%.The distribution by gender was of 56% of male and 44% of female respondents and 92% of respondents were aged between 18 and 30.The respondents came from 31 countries including Japan (20%), Spain (20%), United States (14%) and the other countries group (46%).The remaining 28 countries respondents were grouped together as there were not enough responses per country to get statistically significant results per country.
For the data analysis we used the Statistical Software SPSS.Through cross-tabulation analysis we compared differences across groups and performed chi-square tests to see if the differences were statistically significant.For all cases the null hypothesis (H0) was that there is no statistically significant difference across groups, whilst the alternative hypothesis (HA) was that there is statistically a significant difference across groups.If the chi-square test value was lower than 0.05, we rejected the H0 and accept with a 95% confidence interval the HA.Additionally, we evaluated the size of the significant effects as being small, medium or large, depending on the degrees of freedom and the size of the Cramer's V (Cohen, 1988) (Table 2).

Image of entrepreneurs
We asked respondents if they personally knew someone that had started their own business in the past five years, and 85% responded affirmatively.This shows that entrepreneurs are present in all of the populations of our study.
There were five items that showed no significant differences after the cross-tabulation between the entrepreneur's characteristics and the different countries, meaning they showed similar levels of support across the countries studied (Table 5).These items are important across all countries, and show a high level of agreement, making them robust and reliable characteristics of entrepreneurs in our sample (Table 5).These items are: "Entrepreneurs are able and willing to take risks" (92%, 4.38), "Entrepreneurs are dynamic people" (83%, 4.15), "Entrepreneurs help the economic development of the country" (81%, 4.11), "Entrepreneurs create jobs" (80%, 4.05), "Entrepreneurs have a good entrepreneurial vision" (70%, 3.84) and "Entrepreneurs are very innovative" (70%, 3.71) (Table 3).
Whilst the item that the respondents disagreed or completely disagreed with was: "Entrepreneurs can accomplish every task successfully" (60%), (Table 3).This is significant, as it seems that the image of the entrepreneur is not being idealized.Entrepreneurs are not being considered capable of doing every task well, but appear to have more realistic characteristics.
The results of the cross-tabulation analysis can be found in Table 4.Our results show that the image of the entrepreneurs in Spain was the most positive with the highest agreement with the items: "Entrepreneurs have good organizational skills", "Entrepreneurs have good financial and management skills", "Entrepreneurs are professionally well prepared" and "Entrepreneurs can manage a company successfully".However they showed the least agreeance, from the countries studied with the item: "Entrepreneurs earn a high income".We found there to be less support to the entrepreneur characteristic Results: Chi-square =0 .028(4df), 0% cases have expected count < 5. Cramer's V = 0.146.
items in Japan, and US respondents had intermediate values.Interestingly 50% of Japanese respondents believed "entrepreneurs earn a high income", whilst only 14% of Spanish respondents believed so, despite the positive image previously shown in Spain.It appears that the perspectives of income are very different across the countries studied.Lastly, we found significant differences in the agreement of "Entrepreneurs help the economic development of the country".Although, the majority of respondents supported this statement, the proportion that did so in Japan (84%) was lower than in the rest of countries, (above 94%).There were a number of items that showed no significant differences after the cross-tabulation between the entrepreneur's characteristics and the different countries, meaning they showed similar levels of support across the countries studied (Table 5).These items are important across all countries, and show a high level of agreement, making them robust and reliable characteristics of entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurial distance
We cross-tabulated the three different categories with the respondent's intention to become an entrepreneur.We found significant differences between the three distance categories (negative, match and positive) and the entrepreneurial intention of the respondents, with the chisquare test being 0.028 < 0.05, therefore we can say with a 95% confidence interval that the H 0 (no significant differences between groups) can be rejected, and we accept the alternative hypothesis H A (there are significant differences between groups).

DISCUSSION
Our first hypothesis was partly supported, as the Japanese culture being considered the least conducive towards entrepreneurship (GEM consortium, 2014) and the less agreement with the items relating to the image of entrepreneurs.However, we expected the US respondents to have the most positive view of entrepreneurial characteristics, as the US culture is the most conducive towards entrepreneurship of those studied, but in our study, Spanish respondents appeared to have a more positive image of entrepreneurs than any other.
For each of the respondents we plotted the relationship between the distance and intention and saw the three different distance groups (negative, match and positive) have different intention distributions (Table 6).
For the "negative" and "match" distances, as our hypothesis predicted, there are a higher number of respondents that intend to "establish my own business or be self-employed in the foreseeable future", 55.6 and 53.5% respectively, and a lower number of respondents that disagree with this statement, 14.8 and 21.8%, respectively.This supports our hypothesis 2 and 4 that stated that there would be a "positive correlation between a match (H 1 ) negative (H 3 ) entrepreneurial distance and entrepreneurial intention" and a "positive correlation between a negative entrepreneurial distance and entrepreneurial intention".H 4 shows the importance of self-confidence in a respondent's own abilities whilst H 2 highlights the importance of possessing the traits that they believe are important to succeed as an entrepreneur.
With regards to the "positive" distance, the respondents showed a lower level of entrepreneurial intention (35.9%) and a higher level of disagreement with this statement (35.9%), supporting hypothesis 3 that stated that there would be a "negative correlation between a positive entrepreneurial distance and entrepreneurial intention".Therefore a mismatch between the characteristics that the respondents consider to be important to become an entrepreneur and their own abilities, is detrimental for entrepreneurial intention.

Conclusion
There is a very positive general image of entrepreneurs across all countries studied, as them being dynamic, innovative, willing to take risks, having a good entrepreneurial vision and being able to create jobs.However some differences exist between countries, and these seem to be related to how conducive the culture of the country is, with those being less conducive supporting the least positive image of entrepreneurs.Additionally, we have found a new way to assess entrepreneurial intention, by understanding how close to the entre-preneurial profile the respondents feel they are.This "spectator" and "stakeholder" comparative model could be applicable to other fields by comparing the qualities that are considered important for the profession being considered and the respondent's own abilities and intention to take on that career.In the future we hope to apply this methodology to other fields in which the stakeholderspectator relationship can be interesting.

Table 1 .
Corresponding items used to calculate the "entrepreneurial distance".
would like to know if this profile is the same across countries, or if differences exist around the world.To explore this, we used a fivepoint Likert Scale and Veciana's items of attributes related to the image of entrepreneurs

Table 3 .
Characterization of entrepreneurs across all countries studied.

Table 4 .
Statistically Significant Differences between countries in terms of Entrepreneur's Characteristics.

Table 5 .
Non-statistically significant differences amongst countries in terms of entrepreneur's characteristics.

Table 6 .
Cross tabulation of Distance vs. Entrepreneurial Intention.