COVID-19 Pandemic and Household Entrepreneurship in Nigeria: Do Crises Create Necessity-driven and/or Innovative Entrepreneurship?

Global Journal of Emerging Market Economies. 2024. Vol. 16. No. 2. P. 270–286.

Wahab B. A., Jibir A., Abdu M.

Abstract
The need for promoting entrepreneurship stems from the efforts to provide long-lasting solutions to
the challenges of poverty and unemployment. This becomes even more crucial in worldwide crises
such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only had a momentous effect on
businesses and economies but has also driven us to recognize the importance of entrepreneurship.
This study explores the combination of important entrepreneurial and household factors that drive
the growth of new businesses during and after the crisis. This study applies the Round 2 data from the
Nigeria National Longitudinal Phone Survey Phase 2 conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics in
collaboration with the World Bank between November 2021 and August 2022. The logistic regression
model analyzes how job loss due to the pandemic correlates with the probability of household heads
starting and operating an enterprise immediately after the pandemic and the probability for the existing
household entrepreneurs to innovate. The findings show that necessity-driven entrepreneurship
became effective immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria, and innovation and opportunity
recognition were more relevant as success factors during periods of crisis than during regular times.
This is because the crisis produced a new set of highly competitive and strategic entrepreneurs that
quickly adapted to new situations or conditions through their innovative capacity. Several policy
recommendations derived from the study’s empirical findings are discussed in the conclusion section
of the article.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, household, COVID-19