Too Much Support, Not Enough Ecosystem? Resource Munificence, Government Support, and New Venture Founding in Northeastern China

Northeastern China has received two decades of sustained state investment under successive revitalization programs, yet its rate of new venture founding continues to trail that of coastal regions. We integrate entrepreneurial ecosystem theory, real options reasoning, and the too-much-of-a-good-thing perspective to explain this puzzle. Using simulated survey data that mirror a two-wave design covering 1,000 firms in Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, and eastern Inner Mongolia, we find that ecosystem resource munificence is positively associated with the number of new ventures that firms found. Government support exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with founding, with a turning point slightly above the regional mean. Environmental dynamism strengthens the munificence and founding relationship, consistent with the view that rich ecosystems lower the cost of acquiring growth options under uncertainty. A complementary role for firm AI adoption appears in some specifications but not across a 144-specification multiverse. The results suggest that ecosystem depth, rather than support intensity, governs founding in transition regions.