Dear Colleagues,

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented human suffering and an economic super-shock which some fear might lead to global long-term economic crisis and recession. Social distancing, quarantines, mandatory closings of non-essential businesses, and travel restrictions have already disrupted businesses of all sizes and in various industry sectors. However, microentrepreneurs have purportedly been more affected by the pandemic than larger businesses, and emerging reports suggest that government attempts to provide relief to the former have been ineffective and/or hijacked by the latter. For the purpose of this Special Issue, we are defining microentrepreneurship as the process of launching or adding value to a small enterprise, employing no more than five people, with the aim to serve a market need and permit the owner a desired livelihood and lifestyle. Considering the general consensus that small and microbusinesses fulfill crucial social functions and are at the base of equitable and sustainable economic development, it is imperative that we devote ourselves to the study of how microentrepreneurs have reacted to, and are hopefully pivoting from, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Possible research topics within the scope of this Special Issue include but are not limited to microentrepreneurs’ rapid adoption of e-commerce to overcome the fall of traditional sales channels; evaluation of the effectiveness of relief programs offered by government organizations; virus exposure control measures employed by transportation microentrepreneurs to protect their health and the health of their clients; decrease of private vacation home rentals in some markets and growth in other markets; structural changes in the type of short-term rental hosts (i.e., single property owner vs. investment groups with management companies); rural communities’ attitudes toward local home rental microentrepreneurs hosting urban pandemic refugees; tourism destinations’ adoption of virtual tours during travel restrictions; restaurateurs pivoting to takeout, limited dispersed seating, and other business models during mandatory restaurant closures; the impact of tourism restrictions on independent guides, crafts hawkers, street vendors, street artists, and other informal micro-businesses; sources of microentrepreneurs’ livelihood vulnerability and resilience in the face of this crisis; post-COVID gig economy regulatory landscape as it adapts to new public health imperatives and competitive pressures from a struggling formal sector; best practices in microentrepreneurship mentoring adapted to the interaction constraints posed by the COVID-19 pandemic; and emerging microentrepreneurial opportunities; new demands posed on microentrepreneurship education and mentoring.

In sum, microentrepreneurs are typically under-resourced and underserved, though central to socio-economic functioning and equitable economic development. Therefore, the aim of this issue is to encourage time-sensitive research on how microentrepreneurs are being affected by, and attempting to recover from the business constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Through this collaboration with an open source journal, we hope to widely disseminate new knowledge in this topic among academics, industry practitioners, and policy-makers so that evidence-based strategies can better be developed to assist people and communities toward recovery.

Dr. Duarte Morais
Dr. Bruno Ferreira 
Guest Editors

Select References:

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• COVID-19
• microentrepreneurship
• business resilience
• entrepreneurial resilience
• tourism microentrepreneurship
• gig economy
• sharing economy
• microentrepreneurial self-efficacy