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An Empirical Investigation on the Psychological Antecedents of Social Entrepreneurship

  • Andrea Kim , Chul Woo Moon , Sang Kyun Kim ORCID logo , You Sang Koh and Jiseon Shin EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: May 29, 2019

Abstract

Despite the growing phenomenon of social entrepreneurship, the existing literature has limited quantitative findings on its determinants. This study examines the psychological origins of social entrepreneurial behavior based on the motivated information processing theory. Our structural equation modeling analysis of 179 nascent social entrepreneurs in South Korea indicates the indirect effects of prosocial motivation on social enterprise creation behavior through perceived meaningfulness and social entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Our findings empirically identify the cognitive mechanisms between prosocial motivation and social entrepreneurial behavior. Also, the results of this research complement the existing scholarly conversations that compare the motives of social entrepreneurs with those of commercial entrepreneurs.

Funding statement: This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2015S1A5A8017362).

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editor, Thomas S. Lyons, and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. We also wish to acknowledge the assistance of Hyunjoo Lee in data analysis. An earlier version of this research was presented at the 76th Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA.

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Published Online: 2019-05-29

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