How Does the Development of the Social Enterprise Sector Affect Entrepreneurial Behavior? An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

Research on social entrepreneurship (SE) has increased exponentially during the past decade. Even though this social phenomenon has aroused the interest of researchers, many aspects have not yet been fully studied. In this study, the goal is to analyze how the factors that define the behavior of social entrepreneurs are affected by the perception that they have about the development of the social enterprise sector (SES development). We perform an empirical multivariable analysis using 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data related to SE, with an international sample that contains information of 17,778 entrepreneurs, of which 6470 are social entrepreneurs. The empirical analysis is carried out applying binary response models, introducing interaction terms to analyze the moderating effect of SES development. Our results show that the entrepreneurs’ perception of the SES development exerts a moderating effect over three different groups of factors: 1) factors related to self-perception about entrepreneurship (including values, perceptions, and entrepreneurial skills); 2) demographic factors (gender, age, and education level), and 3) context and entrepreneurial environment (including factors related to entrepreneurs’ perception of societal values, entrepreneurship environment, and economic development). This moderating effect has very important implications, especially for policymakers. Our results show that SES development could amplify some effects, both positively and negatively. Therefore, the design and implementation of policies to support SE must consider the moderating role of this variable on the entrepreneurial behavior, because it could affect the effectiveness of such policies.

The Influence of the Ecosystem on the Motivation of Social Entrepreneurs

“…The internal factors include values, attitudes, and entrepreneurial skills [48][49][50] and the entrepreneur's personal characteristics [28,30,51,52]. The external factors include the entrepreneurial environment [32,[53][54][55] and the financial and institutional environment [21,27,38,40,56].…”

“…Thirdly, the entrepreneurial environment [53][54][55], which is formed by the opinion of qualified experts (NES) and the facilities to start a business (EASYSTART), also shows sig-nificant differences, since the average of both variables is higher in innovation-driven countries.…”

“…The third group, the entrepreneurial environment [53][54][55], includes two variables: the opinion of qualified experts on this environment (NES) and the facilities to start a business.…”

The Moderating Effect of Countries’ Development on the Characterization of the Social Entrepreneur: An Empirical Analysis with GEM Data

“…When we want to understand the behavior of social entrepreneurs, it is necessary to consider the environment where the social entrepreneurial activity takes place (Bacq and Janssen 2011;Fernández-Laviada et al 2020). Moreover, the characterization of the behavior of the social entrepreneur requires consideration of the effect of the development of the country, because it may condition the relevance that other factors have for this behavior (Nicolás et al 2018).…”

The Role of CSR on Social Entrepreneurship: An International Analysis

“…In the second phase, the conceptual theoretical development of SE was produced, with a shift in focus from an idealistic position to a pragmatic one [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. In recent years, scholars have focused on impact analyses of the social, cultural, political, and economic contexts of SE [27][28][29][30][31][32][33], as well as determining the societal values and individual attributes of SE [34][35][36][37][38][39]. Some authors claim to push SE research forward in two directions: understanding the specific contextual framework that promotes the rise of SE and the incorporation of cross-national empirical studies due to qualitative and case study methodologies dominating the research [13,40].…”