Beyond environmental scarcity: Human and social capital as driving forces of bootstrapping activities

•First study evaluating the bootstrapping phenomenon in nascent ventures.•Bootstrapping approach is directed at avoiding market based resource transactions.•Bootstrapping is a choice of entrepreneurs beyond environmental scarcity.•Entrepreneurs with higher levels of social and human capital show more bootstrapping.•Weak ties are more relevant for bootstrapping activity than strong ties.

Although entrepreneurship scholars highlight bootstrapping as a key resource acquisition approach to respond to the inherent resource constraints that nascent ventures face, little is known about what causes nascent ventures to engage in bootstrapping. Theory highlights the environment as an important determinant of bootstrapping activity. Analyzing bootstrapping behavior of 298 nascent ventures, we find that beyond perceived environmental factors, individual characteristics of the nascent entrepreneurs and factors relating to the embeddedness of the entrepreneurs in the environment determine their venture's bootstrapping behavior. In a more fine-grained analysis we gain insights into how these antecedents shape the use of particular bootstrapping strategies. Findings contribute to our understanding of factors driving resource management approaches in nascent ventures.