The role of empathy in entrepreneurial opportunity recognition: An experimental study in Japan and Pakistan

The paper investigates the role of perspective taking and empathic concern as cognitive and affective components of empathy in entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. The results of the scenario-based experimental study using the samples of undergraduate business students in Japan and Pakistan suggest that, although the use of perspective taking in the entrepreneurial context helps individuals in recognizing opportunities as the previous study found, the use of both perspective taking and emphasizing empathic concern increases the ability of opportunity recognition more than the use of perspective taking only. We discuss theoretical and practical implications and future research directions.