The perception of risk in the decision to create a business.

Summary In this thesis we examine the topic of risk perception in the decision to start a business from three different angles: (1) The antecedents of risk perception, i.e., the situational and personal variables that condition it and the cognitive processes that affect it. (2) The very definition of risk perception in the context of business creation, with its various dimensions. (3) The way in which different cognitive approaches and perceptions of risk translate into the behavior of entrepreneurs during the start-up process. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 focused on the first perspective. In chapter 1, we examine the weight of a "classic" personal variable, risk propensity, vis-à-vis the weight of two situational variables that are supposed to condition the "framing" of the situation: the description of the option to create and the employment situation. In chapter 2, we are interested in the cognitive processes that affect the way in which additional information on a creation project is assimilated and translated into terms of risk perception. In Chapter 3, we complement the first perspective adopted in the thesis by exploring models of entrepreneurial intentions from a risk perspective. Chapter 4 focuses on the second perspective adopted. In this chapter, we present the development and first empirical test of a new scale for measuring the perception of risk associated with business creation. Finally, Chapter 5 adopts the third perspective, examining how risk perception translates into the entrepreneurial behavior of "real" entrepreneurs. Through 40 interviews, we identify two cognitive approaches used by entrepreneurs in the way they perceive and react to different entrepreneurial risks: intuition and analysis.