eng Science and Education Publishing Journal of Behavioural Economics, Finance, Entrepreneurship, Accounting and Transport 2376-1334 2015-01-30 3 1 12 20 10.12691/jbe-3-1-2 JBE2015312 article SALIMA TAKTAK Salima.taktak@yahoo.fr 1 MOHAMED TRIKI 1 Sfax University, Tunisia Unity of research GOVERNANCE Even though the entrepreneurship literature places much emphasis on opportunity recognition, little is known about how entrepreneurs actually evaluate opportunities. This study uses a cognitive approach to examine opportunity evaluation, as the perception of opportunity is essentially a cognitive phenomenon. We present a model that consists of four independent variables (overconfidence, risk perception, creativity, Relational networks and environmental factors, experience, education and opportunity identification), two control variables (demographics and age), and the dependent variable (opportunity evaluation). We find that overconfidence and risk perception are related to how entrepreneurs evaluate opportunities. Our results also indicate that entrepreneurial individual factors affect opportunity evaluation. http://pubs.sciepub.com/jbe/3/1/2/jbe-3-1-2.pdf opportunity evaluation overconfidence risk aversion BayesiaLab