ONLINE TRANSACTION AND ENTREPRENEURIAL SELFEFFICACY AS PREDICTORS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS DURING COVID-19 LOCKDOWN

Abstract

Psychological distress is a state of emotional discomfort associated with stressors or demands that are daily encountered. Reports indicate that during the covid-19 lockdown of the year 2020, not only were businesses distressed, entrepreneurs were also badly affected psychologically. Literature is replete with factors affecting psychological distress in healthcare services, but few have been dedicated to small-scale businesses, more so during the COVID-19 lockdown. This study, therefore, examined online transactions and entrepreneurial self-efficacy as predictors of psychological distress during the COVID-19 lockdown among the entrepreneurs. It was an expost-facto study conducted among 476 small business owners (284 male and 192 female, mean age of 29.9, and standard deviation of 7.4) in Lagos State, using a cross-sectional design. Using independent t-test for both, findings of the first hypothesis showed that small scale entrepreneurs that do not make use of online transactions during Covid-19 lockdown scored higher on the measure of psychological distress than their counterparts that use online transaction (t= -3.02; df (474); P<.01). The second hypothesis showed that small scale entrepreneurs with high self-efficacy scored lower on psychological distress (t= -5.49; df (474); P<.01). It was recommended that small business entrepreneurs should embrace online transaction as part of the ways to reach out to their customers, and that their work should be redesigned to make working online easy and satisfactory.