Unpacking the micro–macro transmission mechanism: how home-country culture selectively shapes cognitive orientations in entrepreneurial internationalization

International business accounts treat national culture as a country-level antecedent that shifts average export propensity uniformly, leaving the individual-level mechanisms producing within-country heterogeneity in internationalization intensity unspecified. We address this micro–macro transmission gap using social cognitive theory, examining how individualism versus collectivism and risk avoidance versus tolerance selectively recalibrate three cognitive orientations in entrepreneurial export decisions: perceived self-efficacy, perceived opportunity availability, and fear of failure. Our multilevel analysis of 40,529 observations across 41 countries spanning 2010–2019 reveals divergent rather than uniform moderation: individualism amplifies self-efficacy and opportunity availability beliefs through the social validation pathway, while risk avoidance constrains opportunity availability beliefs and fear of failure through the anticipatory self-regulation and outcome expectancy pathways. Fear of failure’s directional relationship with internationalization is contingent on the expectations of failure costs that the home-country cultural environment establishes through the outcome expectancy pathway, rather than being uniformly inhibitory as prior frameworks assume. These findings advance international business microfoundations theory by specifying the observable transmission pathways through which national cultural dimensions produce heterogeneous export intensity outcomes within the same national context. For policymakers, the findings imply that interventions to strengthen self-efficacy or opportunity awareness work best when calibrated to a country’s cultural profile.