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This study aims to investigate how entrepreneurial anxiety develops during the entrepreneurial intention stage in a developing country such as Bangladesh, where doing business has long been a challenge, and examine how individuals manage their entrepreneurial anxiety. Indeed, understanding how anxiety is formed when individuals decide to start a business has been a challenge, because such a decision is influenced by both individual and contextual factors.

This study applies thematic analysis to examine how individuals experience and react to entrepreneurial anxiety in a developing country context when they make a decision to start a business using data from 30 in-depth semistructured interviews with 20 aspiring and 10 active entrepreneurs. All participants are Bangladeshi nationals.

Consistent with earlier studies, the findings of this study revealed that entrepreneurial anxiety is regarded as a type of distress, doubt, fear, uneasiness and worry. Moreover, 11 distinct sources of entrepreneurial anxiety were identified, suggesting that some individuals develop problem-focused coping strategies to stay firm on their decision to start a business as planned, whereas others procrastinate.

The findings add new dimensions to the theory of entrepreneurial anxiety and offer practical implications for aspiring entrepreneurs, policymakers, parents and society as a whole.

This study contributes to an underexplored area of emotion in entrepreneurship by conceptualizing how entrepreneurial anxiety develops during a specific stage of the entrepreneurial process, that is, entrepreneurial intention.