The Association between Entrepreneurial Perceived Behavioral Control, Personality, Empathy, and Assertiveness in a Romanian Sample of Nascent Entrepreneurs
, Delia Vîrgă 2, Theofild-Andrei Lazăr 1, Delia Gligor 3 and Cecilia-Nicoleta Jurcuț 3,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is certainly of interest and has several merits. The data basis is quite small with 212 respondents among 1.000 addressed people. The analysis is fine but I do have difficulties to follow the analysis of the personality tableau as done carefully and described adequately and the conclusions that entrepreneurship education must increase some entrepreneurial dispositions. Also, the relationship between the sample and the entrepreneurial perceived behavioral control and contextual variables and determinants is not fully explained or even acknowledged. At least, I am expecting that the story must be explained and orchestrated more carefully which may require a revision input being higher than just minor revision.
Author Response
R: The paper is certainly of interest and has several merits. The data basis is quite small with 212 respondents among 1.000 addressed people.
A: We have provided some additional information in the text regarding the response rates in online surveys in online surveys and their recent trends.
R: The analysis is fine but I do have difficulties to follow the analysis of the personality tableau as done carefully and described adequately and the conclusions that entrepreneurship education must increase some entrepreneurial dispositions.
A: We revised the Conclusions section accordingly and also provided new references for the applicative dimension of the results
R: Also, the relationship between the sample and the entrepreneurial perceived behavioral control and contextual variables and determinants is not fully explained or even acknowledged. At least, I am expecting that the story must be explained and orchestrated more carefully which may require a revision input being higher than just minor revision.
A: The structure of the article was revised in order to better highlight the relationship between the variables.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript explains how perceived behavioral control (PBC) is influenced – or driven – by nascent entrepreneurs’ personal characteristics in Romania with a specific focus on personality traits, the Big Five model, especially empathy and assertiveness. The abstract provides a very clear précis of the aim, methods, and findings. The abstract also provides coherent argumentation for the theoretical contribution of the study.
The introduction combined with the second section states the aim, objectives and hypotheses of the study very clearly; and provides a coherent rationale for the topic and research question. Therefore, the theoretical contribution is convincing and supported by the prior evidence from the literature. Rather unusually, but perhaps not for this journal or the more social science oriented approach, there is no literature review section; but instead the literature is reviewed in the introduction. However, the literature on PBC, higher education attainment, and the big five personality traits in relation to (nascent) entrepreneurship has been comprehensively reviewed. Thus the hypotheses are grounded firmly in the extant literature.
The materials and methods section is excellent and comprehensive, providing a superb overview of the sample, measures, and data analysis.
The results section provides a very robust and rigorous analysis of the data from the study and, in particular, the hierarchical multiple regression analyses.
The Conclusion relates the empirical findings to the extant literature and thus highlights and justifies the novel contribution. It also highlights the study’s limitations.
Author Response
Thank you very much for the review! Kind regards,
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
- Conclusions should be more on your results, less on other results. For example, no need to concluse on education as you did not research it.
- I'm confused with the manner of data collecting:
- You use the survey with Likert scale but actually you have 3 different scales: 2 times 1-5, 1 time 0-4 and 1 time 1-7. It's unclear and confusing
- Having different Likert scale for variables, in table 1 you show means and standard deviations, however means are between 11-54. In data based on Liekert scale rather frequency of answers should be shown than means because of problems with interpretations.
- Moreover, how did you calculate means between 11-54 having possible answers to 4, 5 or 7?
- You put all aspects of personality profile, empathy and assertivness in one hypothesis. However, among personality treats agreeableness and among empathy the empathic concerns are not significant to explain the behavioral control. It means that hypotheses should not be accepted so easily as you did. I suggest to reflect your hypotheses once again
- Please, read once again you comments in lines 329-338. You comment on agreeableness and other personal treats in the context of hypothesis 2 on empathy. It's not correct.
Author Response
R: Conclusions should be more on your results, less on other results. For example, no need to concluse on education as you did not research it.
A: We revised the Conclusions section accordingly and also provided new references for the applicative dimension of the results
R: I'm confused with the manner of data collecting:
You use the survey with Likert scale but actually you have 3 different scales: 2 times 1-5, 1 time 0-4 and 1 time 1-7. It's unclear and confusing
A: we have used the measures and scoring techniques, as originally designed by their authors
R: Having different Likert scale for variables, in table 1 you show means and standard deviations, however means are between 11-54. In data based on Liekert scale rather frequency of answers should be shown than means because of problems with interpretations. Moreover, how did you calculate means between 11-54 having possible answers to 4, 5 or 7?
A: To make the understanding of the table easier, for each variable, we have divided the value of the mean (M) and standard deviation (SD) to the number of items.
R: You put all aspects of personality profile, empathy and assertivness in one hypothesis. However, among personality treats agreeableness and among empathy the empathic concerns are not significant to explain the behavioral control. It means that hypotheses should not be accepted so easily as you did. I suggest to reflect your hypotheses once again
A: Regarding the third hypothesis and the approach used for the analysis (Hierarchical multilinear regressions), we employed a formulation which allowed us to both highlight the hypothesized association between the two variables and also the additional value it brings (above the previously discussed variables) in explaining the variance in the dependent variable (PBC). In such cases, it is customary to mention the previous variables (whose effect is controlled or kept constant), because in the third step we checked for the additional variance in PBC, explained only by assertiveness, as a malleable personal resource.
R: Please, read once again you comments in lines 329-338. You comment on agreeableness and other personal treats in the context of hypothesis 2 on empathy. It's not correct.
A: We have simplified the explanation of the result in order to make it easier for the reader to understand the main idea
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
In my opinion, the paper can be published in current vesrion.
