Applying insights from behavioural economics to foster entrepreneurship: a systematic literature review

While insights from behavioural economics and science have been applied to a variety of fields, the application in entrepreneurship remains limited, particularly in regards to cultivating entrepreneurship on the individual level in order to inform future investigations that endeavour to encourage more individuals to become entrepreneurs through behavioural interventions. The study aims to fill the gap by conducting a systematic literature review to identify relevant insights, concepts, and themes from behavioural economics that are applicable to the field of entrepreneurship from studies published in the past two decades. Findings showed that risk propensity and overconfidence play a role in determining entry or non-entry to entrepreneurship. Moreover, other biases, including heuristics, sunk cost fallacy, and planning fallacy also determine entry to entrepreneurship. Despite several limitations, findings of the review can become a starting point for future research on insights from behavioural economics that can be used to help influence individuals to start a business.