Resource loss, search distance, and crisis-triggered identity

We examine why entrepreneurs facing comparable losses during crises search for substitutes at different distances from their incumbent resource pools. We study 27 entrepreneurs who fled Russia following the 2022 war in Ukraine. Building on Conservation of Resources theory, we find that resource-loss severity shaped search distance, but not uniformly: entrepreneurs with modest losses largely substituted within incumbent resource pools. Where severe loss depleted those pools, entrepreneurs drew on what we term crisis-triggered identity (a self-understanding the crisis activated), and their searches diverged, some remaining within familiar domains, others ranging into unfamiliar ones. Entrepreneurs’ losses set how far they must search; who they understand themselves to be sets how far they will.