Persistence of Regional Entrepreneurship Patterns: Quantity and Quality of Regional Business Opportunity Perception

The recognition of regional business opportunities is the crucial starting point of the entrepreneurial process that governs the persistence of regional entrepreneurship patterns. This persistence depends on the quantity of perceived opportunities and the quality of opportunities perceived by regional inhabitants. However, it is unclear which region-individual interactions relate to the quantity regional business opportunity perception and how long-standing regional entrepreneurship patterns are reflected in conceptions of entrepreneurship that govern the quality of perceived opportunities. A primary data collection in German regions with distinct long-standing entrepreneurship patterns assessed two main aspects. First, the regional embeddedness of respondents on four levels – actor, network, environmental, and cultural – is set in relation to the likelihood of opportunity perception. Second, an implicit measurement of mental representations of entrepreneurship is examined. The mental representations of entrepreneurship, reflecting the conceptions of entrepreneurship, are investigated to identify differences between the conceptions of entrepreneurship that come along with the long-standing regional entrepreneurship patterns and to detect differences between opportunity-perceivers and non-perceivers. The results suggest that regions reinforce long-standing entrepreneurship patterns with distinct individual-region relations that impact the quantity of perceived regional opportunities and distinct conceptualizations of entrepreneurship that shape the quality of perceived opportunities. Differences are observed for the perception of opportunities that are characterized by innovativeness versus those that are general in nature, showing that innovative opportunity perception is less dependent on the regional context than general opportunity perception.