The relationship between entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience and well-being: Solving the contradictory findings using the set-theoretic approach

Recently, two published studies examined the relationship between psychological resilience and entrepreneurs’ well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. One study demonstrated that entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience was related to their well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic period, whereas the other study showed that entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience was unnecessary in maintaining well-being during the same period. We argue that these seemingly contradictory findings can be resolved by using the set-theoretic approach rather than the regression-based approach, which allows the examination of multiple causal pathways to outcomes and to differentiate and identify necessary and sufficient conditions in causality. The results of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) using the Japanese data demonstrated that psychological resilience is sufficient but not necessary condition for entrepreneurs’ well-being when a threat to the business is perceived by entrepreneurs, which is consistent with the findings of the two previous studies. Based on the findings, we propose future research to better understand the nature of entrepreneurial resilience.