Title: Social entrepreneurship determinants: an empirical study related to Tunisia

Authors: Ines Ben Chikha; Anis Jarboui

Addresses: Faculty of Economic Sciences and Management of Sfax-Tunisia, LARTIGE Laboratory, University of Sfax, Airport Road km 4, 3018, Sfax, Tunisia ' Faculty of Economic Sciences and Management of Sfax-Tunisia, LARTIGE Laboratory, University of Sfax, Airport Road km 4, 3018, Sfax, Tunisia

Abstract: Recently, social entrepreneurship becomes one of the best solutions to reduce various problems such as: social, environmental and economic. In order to contribute to this research field, the current study focused on investigating the determinants of Tunisian social entrepreneurship. For this purpose, statistical analysis was done by using 286 social entrepreneurs. Based on the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) method, our empirical study showed that Tunisian social entrepreneurship is influenced positively by four key factors: the personality traits, the entrepreneurial competencies, the entrepreneurial motivations and the favourable environmental factors. However, the unfavourable environmental factors, which include financial constraints, bad infrastructures, lack of entrepreneurial education and training, inadequate form of accompaniment and cumbersome administrative procedures, present major handicaps for the creation of social enterprises. Hence, financial institutions, company incubators and the state should intervene by acting on these factors in order to encourage social investment.

Keywords: social entrepreneurship; personality traits; entrepreneurial competencies; entrepreneurial motivation; favourable environment; PLS-SEM; partial least squares; PLS structural equation modelling; SEM; Tunisia; financial constraints; infrastructure; entrepreneurship education; training; administrative procedures; social investment.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSEI.2016.076685

International Journal of Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 2016 Vol.4 No.2, pp.95 - 113

Received: 24 Aug 2015
Accepted: 11 Jan 2016
Published online: 20 May 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article