Towards an understanding of imitative entrepreneurship in scarcity settings

Business imitation is presented as a core characteristic of necessity entrepreneurship, driven by severe scarcity. However, why do entrepreneurs operating under similar conditions then engage in different forms of imitation adapted to their scarcity contexts? Based on extensive fieldwork in South Africa and Papua, we explore when entrepreneurs engage in replicative imitation versus adaptive imitation. Drawing on the psychology of scarcity, we theorize how engaging in these different forms of imitation is influenced by perceived scarcity and how some entrepreneurs, through spatiotemporal separation of constraints, mitigate scarcity’s cognitive effects.