Bouncing Back from Natural Disasters: A survey on retail entrepreneurs’ resilience

The paper aims at investigating the resilience capacity of retail entrepreneurs to natural disasters, verifying the impact of some main entrepreneur’s resilience antecedents such as sales capacity, marketing orientation and networking capabilities. The empirical research consisted in administering a structured questionnaire to a sample of small retailers hit by the 2012 Emilia earthquake. Data was processed applying Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modeling (CB-SEM). Findings show that all the investigated capabilities exert a significant and positive effect on small retailers’ resilience capacity of bouncing back from a natural disaster. The study contributes to the literature on entrepreneur’s resilience to natural disasters, currently still limited in the business and management field, both theoretically and empirically. This is particularly true as regards retailing, despite the key role played by retail activities during the emergency and recovery period in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Scientific, managerial and public policy implications are derived.