Title: Biases and debiasing in bank lending decisions to nascent entrepreneurs - an experimental study

Authors: Jutta Wollersheim; Christoph Döbrich; Matthias Spörrle; Isabell M. Welpe

Addresses: Technische Universität München, Arcisstr. 21, 80333 München, Germany ' Technische Universität München, Arcisstr. 21, 80333 München, Germany ' University of Applied Management, Am Bahnhof 2, 85435 Erding, Germany ' Technische Universität München, Arcisstr. 21, 80333 München, Germany

Abstract: This paper is the first to explore the impact of banking professionals' and entrepreneurs' gender and debiasing interventions on bank lending decisions to nascent entrepreneurs. By means of a 2 × 2 × 2 between-participants questionnaire experiment (N = 168), we examined the potential effects of the banking professional's gender, the entrepreneur's gender, and a debiasing intervention that is widely, if implicitly, used in organisations on the outcome of the credit approval process. We observed a significant gender by gender by debiasing three-way interaction indicating that male banking professionals were neither influenced in their judgement by the entrepreneur's gender, nor by the presence of debiasing, whereas female participants, under the condition of debiasing, favoured male and significantly disadvantaged female entrepreneurs.

Keywords: financing decisions; entrepreneurial finance; entrepreneurship; nascent entrepreneurs; women entrepreneurs; bias; female entrepreneurs; debiasing; gender; discrimination; questionnaire experiment; bank lending decisions.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2013.057202

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2013 Vol.20 No.4, pp.462 - 480

Published online: 30 Apr 2014 *

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