Entrepreneurs' human capital resources and tourism firm sales growth: A fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis.

New private tourism firms play a key role in promoting local and national wealth creation. Building upon insights from entrepreneurial motivation and human capital theories, in this study fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of longitudinal data was employed to identify the human capital pathways of 1182 entrepreneurs in Portugal engaged in tourism reporting high firm sales growth between 2008 and 2015. Two dimensions of entrepreneur human capital at firm start-up were found to be sufficient for high sales growth: a) Necessity- and opportunity-based entrepreneurs with specific human capital industry experience relating to tourism, and b) Opportunity-based entrepreneurs with managerial experience. • Entrepreneurial motivations and human capital impact sales growth. • Tourism firm sales growth is determined by factor configurations. • Fuzzy-set QCA identifies the human capital pathways of 1182 entrepreneurs. • Data are split into groups of necessity- and opportunity-based entrepreneurs. • Human capital tourism industry experience generally leads to high sales growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]