Entrepreneurial Cognition when Faced with Risk and Uncertainty: Methodological Reflections

The purpose of the paper is to review and suggest a categorization of methodologies used to trigger entrepreneurial behavior in a variety of settings involving risk and uncertainty. Even though the link between entrepreneurship and risk is undeniably tight, literature often suffers from low predictive power when explaining such link empirically. We argue that this might be due a lack of consensus over both the definition and operationalization of the constructs of risk and uncertainty in entrepreneurship, with particular reference to risk perception. Three types of methodological designs are identified and presented being money games, scenario-based questionnaires, and hybrids. By looking at their advantages and disadvantages, we aim at contributing to a better understanding of the most suitable game designs to capture risk perception, suggesting their use in specific settings and ultimately helping future research in entrepreneurship.