Social Entrepreneurship among Millennials: A Three-Country Comparative Study

Abstract

Anecdotally, members of the millennial generation are in many ways different than members of preceding generations. Millennials are said to be more interested in social issues and also more entrepreneurial than Gen Xers or Boomers. Our study examined the extent to which millennials embraced social entrepreneurship with data from 1114 students from China, Russia, and the USA. We found that perseverance (PER) (in all three countries) and proactive personality (PP) (in China and USA) predicted social entrepreneurial intent (SEI). We also found that social entrepreneurial self-efficacy (SESE) mediated the relationship between the predictors and SEI: PER (in all three countries) and PP (in China and USA). We did not find support for our hypotheses that determinism (a cultural value) or life satisfaction moderated the relationship between predictors and SEI. We did find that concerns about corruption/good government and concerns about the environment moderated the PER-SEI relationship for the Chinese in our sample. Concern about corruption also moderated the PP-SEI relationship for the Chinese but not for the other two countries. Results suggest that for millennials, enhancing SESE may be the key to increasing intentions to become a social entrepreneur.

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurial Self-efficacy; Determinism; Life Satisfaction

Australian Academy of Accounting and Finance Review, vol 2, issue 4, October 2016, page 323-353