The impact of entrepreneurial overconfidence on incubator effectiveness

The low utilization of incubator resources has been subject to much academic attention within entrepreneurship research. This study explores how entrepreneurs’ overconfidence impacts the utilization of incubator resources and influences incubation performance. Based on interviews with 8 incubators and questionnaires from 184 entrepreneurs, the findings show a negative relationship between entrepreneurs’ overconfidence and the incubation performance of start-ups. This finding emerges in the context of incubation management through the fully mediating role of entrepreneurial learning. As a moderator, the contract control of the incubator weakens the negative relationship between entrepreneurs’ overconfidence and entrepreneurial learning. The microcosm of the incubator context allows the researchers to examine the internal agent interaction. This paper explores the related literature, presents the research study, discusses the findings and provides avenues for future scholarly research on this topic.