Entrepreneurial Cognition Under Uncertainty: A Behavioural Theory of Opportunity Evaluation in Turbulent Markets

This dissertation develops a behavioural theory of entrepreneurial cognition and opportunity evaluation under uncertainty, grounded in empirical evidence from entrepreneurs operating in Nigeria's turbulent economic environment, where currency volatility, regulatory unpredictability, and infrastructure instability create persistent deep uncertainty conditions. Mainstream entrepreneurial cognition theory has examined how entrepreneurs process uncertainty, but has been developed predominantly from laboratory experiments and retrospective surveys in stable economies, leaving open the question of how cognitive processes and heuristics operate differently under the sustained deep uncertainty that characterises emerging markets like Nigeria. The dissertation employs a two-phase research design: an in-depth qualitative phase using think-aloud protocols and semi-structured interviews with 30 experienced Nigerian entrepreneurs across four turbulent sectors to identify and map the cognitive strategies and heuristics they use in opportunity evaluation; followed by a behavioural experiment phase with a separate sample of 100 entrepreneurs using validated decision-making tasks that manipulate uncertainty levels and opportunity characteristics. The qualitative phase produces an original taxonomy of 12 distinct cognitive heuristics employed specifically in turbulent market opportunity evaluation, including several not documented in existing cognition literature. The experimental phase tests which heuristics produce higher decision quality outcomes under different uncertainty conditions. The resulting Turbulent Market Opportunity Evaluation model constitutes the dissertation's primary theoretical contribution, extending dual-process entrepreneurial cognition theory to account for sustained environmental turbulence as a moderating context. Keywords: entrepreneurial cognition, opportunity evaluation, uncertainty, behavioural theory, turbulent markets.