Trustworthiness: A Critical Ingredient for Entrepreneurs Seeking Investors
研究创业者与商业天使初次互动中如何通过行为建立、损害或违背信任，并发现获得投资提议的创业者表现出更多建立信任行为和更少无意损害信任行为。
We investigate how an entrepreneur's behaviors during an initial interaction with a business angel can build, damage, or violate trust, and how the investor's level of trust (prompted by the entrepreneur's behavior) can affect his/her decision to make an investment offer. Our empirical analysis shows that entrepreneurs who receive offers from business angels exhibit a larger number of trust–building behaviors during the initial interaction and a smaller number of unintentional trust–damaging behaviors than those who do not receive an offer, and display few deliberate trust–violating behaviors. We further observe that the investor's deployment of a control mechanism is a prerequisite for receiving an investment offer for all entrepreneurs who damage or violate trust.