Our research studies the influence of positive affect on entrepreneurs' evaluations of
opportunities (i.e. novelty assessments and entrepreneurial selection) as well as how
this influence may be different for entrepreneurs belonging to cultural and creative
industries. Drawing on arguments on the role of affect in cognition and considering
the particular situational and individual-level factors of entrepreneurship in cultural
and creative industries, we hypothesize that positive affect influences entrepreneurs'
opportunity evaluation. We also hypothesize that this effect of positive affect is
barely present for cultural and creative entrepreneurs. We test our hypotheses in a
sample of nascent entrepreneurs who took part in entrepreneurship training programmes in six incubators in Spain, who we asked to evaluate their own opportunity.
Our results show that positive affect positively impacts the perceived novelty and
entrepreneurial selection of non-creative entrepreneurs though this impact is limited
for cultural and creative entrepreneurs.
