Entrepreneurial Fear of Failure and Resilience in Nascent Entrepreneurs

Sammanfattning

Nascent entrepreneurship represents one of the most psychologically demanding stages of the venture creation process. Operating without stable organizational structures, reliable performance feedback, or consistent revenue streams, nascent entrepreneurs are particularly vulnerable to psychological pressures that may determine whether they persist or withdraw. Among these pressures, fear of failure and entrepreneurial resilience have received growing scholarly attention, yet their relationship remains underexplored at the nascent stage and with respect to the multidimensional nature of fear of failure. This study examines the associations between the six subdimensions of entrepreneurial fear of failure and entrepreneurial resilience among nascent entrepreneurs. Drawing on a cross-sectional survey of 106 nascent entrepreneurs within the Swedish startup ecosystem, hierarchical Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression was employed to test the direct associations between each subdimension and entrepreneurial resilience. The findings indicate that fear of opportunity costs is the only dimension significantly and negatively associated with entrepreneurial resilience, suggesting that the anticipation of foregone alternatives poses the most salient psychological threat to adaptive capacity at the nascent stage. Contrary to the hypothesized direction, fear of personal ability showed a marginally positive association with resilience, indicating that internal self-doubt may function as a motivational resource rather than a barrier. The remaining four dimensions did not reach statistical significance. These findings contribute to the nascent entrepreneurship literature by demonstrating that fear of failure dimensions are not uniformly associated with entrepreneurial resilience, and highlight the importance of treating fear of failure as a multidimensional construct when examining its relationship with adaptive capacity at the earliest stage of venture creation. Keywords: nascent entrepreneurship, fear of failure, entrepreneurial resilience, opportunity costs, self-efficacy, OLS regression, Sweden