Non-Cognitive Skills and Farmers' Entrepreneurial Performance: Evidence from Chinese Family Panel Studies

Improving the entrepreneurial performance of farmers is conducive to increasing their income, reducing poverty, and securing livelihoods. In the quest for sustainable livelihoods, non-cognitive skills are becoming increasingly significant. Based on data from the 2018 Chinese Family Panel Study, this paper uses the 'Big Five' personality traits and a cross-sectional regression model to construct an indicator system to analyze farmers' non-cognitive skills empirically and determine how these skills affect entrepreneurial performance. The results are as follows: (1) non-cognitive skills that significantly affect farmers' entrepreneurial performance are, in order of influence, openness, extroversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. After considering endogeneity and substitution-explained variables, the above conclusions are still robust. (2) Heterogeneity analysis finds that farmers over 40 and those who start their businesses in cities have higher returns on non-cognitive entrepreneurship. (3) The paper confirms that non-cognitive skills improve farmers' entrepreneurial performance through human and social capital effects. Therefore, entrepreneurs should consciously improve their non-cognitive skills by cultivating an enterprising and innovative spirit and social skills. The government's entrepreneurship training for farmers should also focus on setting up courses in non-cognitive skills development to enhance farmers' entrepreneurial literacy and skills.