Migrant Workers’ Part-time Or Full-time Entrepreneurial Intention: The Role Of Job Security And Core Self-evaluations

Many migrant workers choose to start a business in order to integrate into the urban life better. While, entrepreneurship is a high risk activity, once failed, one will lose more than a job. In order to avoid too much risk and meet a higher level of life needs, part-time entrepreneurship is increasingly showing a rising trend. This study focuses on migrant workers’ part-time entrepreneurship, explored the factors of migrant workers’ part-time entrepreneurship as well as the difference between part-time entrepreneurship and full-time venture.The research included two studies. In the first study, by means of semi-structured interviews with 12 part-time entrepreneurs, we investigated the factors of part-time entrepreneurship and analyze the data on the basis of grounded theory. Results showed that individual factors, family factors, job factors, environmental factors, resources level, entrepreneurship itself and motivation were main factors.On the basis of the qualitative analysis, the second study by means of questionnaire survey of 403 migrant workers, further explored the differences between part-time and full-time entrepreneurial intention. The results showed that:(1)Migrant workers’ job security had a significant positive impact on their part-time entrepreneurial intention;(2) Migrant workers job security had a significant negative impact on its full-time entrepreneurial intention;(3) Migrant workers’ core self-evaluations negatively moderated the relationship between job security and part-time entrepreneurial intention, when the core of self-evaluation was low, positive relationship between them was more significant;(4) Migrant workers’ core self-evaluations negatively moderated the relationship between job security and full-time entrepreneurial intention, when the core self-evaluation was high, the negative relationship between them was the more significant.Finally, we discussed the theoretical and empirical significance, as well as the limitations of the study and future research directions.