Compassion, Pro-social Motivation and Social...
Transcript of Compassion, Pro-social Motivation and Social...
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Compassion, Pro-social Motivation and Social Entrepreneurship:
An Empirical Investigation
Chul Woo Moon,
School of Business,
Sungkyunkwan University, Korea.
You Sang Koh,
Industry and Strategy Department,
Samsung Economic Research Institute, Korea.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Abstract
This research aims to illuminate some of the affective and cognitive origins of social
entrepreneurship by extending and testing a recent theoretical framework of social
entrepreneurship. Our structural equation modeling analysis of 179 nascent social
entrepreneurs in South Korea indicates not only a direct positive linkage between compassion
and prosocial motivation, but also the indirect effects of prosocial motivation on social
enterprise creation behavior through perceived meaningfulness and perceived entrepreneurial
ability. This quantitative study is among the first to provide empirical evidence about the
psychological foundations of social entrepreneurs. Our findings also facilitate an
understanding of how the motives of social entrepreneurs differ from the motives of
conventional entrepreneurs.
_____________________________________________________________________ Keywords: Social entrepreneurship, social enterprise creation behavior, prosocial motivation,
compassion, cognitive process.
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1. Introduction
Theories and empirical evidence in the existing literature on social entrepreneurship are
largely insufficient to delineate the great qualities and motives of potential social entrepreneurs.
According to a recent series of qualitative review work (Dacin, Dacin, & Tracey, 2011;
Hoogendoorn et al., 2010; Mair & Martı´, 2006; Short et al., 2009; Weerawardena & Mort,
2006), previous scholarly efforts on the topic of social entrepreneurship have predominantly
been dedicated to conceptual studies or empirical research with qualitative methods. These
case studies have provided initial findings on certain individual characteristics of social
entrepreneurs, including skills (e.g., Thompson et al., 2000; Turner & Martin, 2005) and
abilities (e.g., Alvord, Brown, & Letts, 2004). However, studies that involve qualitative
methods are often limited in their suggestion of generalizable results (Short et al., 2009).
Furthermore, our empirical knowledge on the individual characteristics of social entrepreneurs
is still lacking (Hoogendoorn et al., 2010) in the sense that many different sets of individual
characteristics are likely to account for the diverse activities of social entrepreneurs (Dacin,
Dacin, & Matear, 2010). Hence, researchers (Dacin et al., 2011; Short et al., 2009) strongly
advocate for more research to expand upon existing organizational theories and, in particular,
to conduct large-sample empirical tests in order to sustain social entrepreneurship as a
meaningful academic inquiry.
The primary purpose of this research is to enrich existing empirical knowledge on the
psychological foundations of social entrepreneurs by extending the previous studies. This
research builds on the theoretical argument that affect, motivation, and cognition are three key
drivers for both conventional (Baron, 1998, 2008; Hayton & Cholakova, 2012; Shane, Locke,
& Collins, 2003) and social entrepreneurship behaviors (Dacin et al., 2011; Dees, 2007; Short
et al., 2009). In line with this, we expand upon a recent perspective that emphasizes the roles
of compassion and prosocial motivation in increasing the likelihood of founding new social
enterprises (Miller, Grimes, McMullen, & Vogus, 2012). Guided by concepts in the work of
Miller and colleagues, we suggest and empirically examine a theoretical model of social
enterprise creation behavior. Specifically, our model regards compassion as an affective
explanatory variable that invokes prosocial motivation, which is responsible for three
cognitive processes (i.e., perceived meaningfulness, appreciation of non-monetary
compensation, and perceived entrepreneurial ability) leading to social enterprise creation
behaviors. All of this is elaborated upon in the next section.
2. Theory and Hypotheses
Building on the psychological approach in the social entrepreneurship (e.g., Miller et al.,
2012), we delve into the association between prosocial motivation and social entrepreneurship
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behaviors in individuals by looking at its mechanisms in three ways. In particular, we argue
that individuals are more likely to act on social entrepreneurship when they find
meaningfulness in their social entrepreneurship behavior (i.e., perceived meaningfulness),
when they value non-monetary compensation relative to monetary one (i.e., appreciation of
non-monetary compensation), and when they feel competent in their ability to establish new
social enterprises (i.e., perceived entrepreneurial ability). We elaborate on each of these
mechanisms following our discussion on compassion and prosocial motivation as preceding
factors.
2.1 Compassion and Prosocial Motivation
Compassion can be construed as a notable dispositional affect, which is likely to
characterize nascent social entrepreneurs. According to the Oxford Dictionaries online,
compassion is defined as “sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of
others.” Because compassion involves “being moved by another’s suffering and wanting to
help” (Lazarus, 1991: p. 289), it “arises in witnessing another’s suffering” (Goetz et al., 2010:
p. 351). A group of researchers (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 2002; Shiota, Keltner, & John, 2006)
have regarded compassion as an enduring affective trait and thus examined the trait-like
tendency to experience compassion (Goetz et al., 2010). By virtue of being a dispositional
affect, compassion is broader (Nussbaum, 1996) and more enduring than empathy (Batson &
Oleson, 1991). Also, empathy refers to sharing the emotional state of others, whereas
compassion refers to an altruistic emotion in its own right (Lazarus, 1991). Inspired by the
argument that the decision to create a social enterprise hinges on the other-oriented emotion
(Dees, 2007), Miller and colleagues (2012) paid a special attention to compassion in terms of
its role in “compelling individuals to alleviate others’ suffering (Batson & Shaw, 1991; Omoto,
Malsch, & Barraza, 2009)” (p. 617) and suggested that compassion-driven cognitive ability
may directly and indirectly motivate certain individuals to exert greater efforts in creating
social enterprises.
Prosocial motivation describes the psychological state that drives nascent social
entrepreneurs to persistently commit to their social mission. As Grant (2008a) noted,
motivation is a broad term that covers the direction, persistence, and intensity of individual
behaviors (e.g., Latham & Pinder, 2005). Earlier, Batson (1987) defined prosocial motivation
as the individual desire to exert efforts to benefit others. The concept of prosocial motivation
focuses on a specific cause of these humanitarian efforts (Grant, 2008), which is a profound
concern for helping others (Grant, 2007). In this sense, social entrepreneurship may be
conceptualized as a way to one’s prosocial motivation (Miller et al., 2012).
In this research, we examine the relationship between compassion as a trait affect and
prosocial motivation as a state motivation by extending the previous research on social
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entrepreneurship. While previous social entrepreneurship scholars have tended to use
compassion and prosocial motivation as interchangeable terms, without clearly differentiating
the concepts (Miller et al., 2012), we instead argue that the terms are conceptually distinct
from one another, and in fact, that one may result in the other. Indeed, compassion and
prosocial motivation have evolved separately in existing psychology and organizational
behavior literature. As noted above, both dictionary and scholarly definitions of compassion
are mainly focused on a feeling of concern for the well-being of others. In contrast, prosocial
motivation encompasses a persistency of active effort to benefit others. Conceptually, effort is
closer to behavioral outcomes than affect, and a causal relationship between compassion and
prosocial motivation has been postulated. The general tendency to value concern for the well-
being of others is known to be an individual trait that encourages prosocial motivation (Penner,
Dovidio, Piliavin, & Schroeder, 2005). In other words, compassion motivates individuals to
have “a subsequent desire to help” (Goetz et al., 2010: p. 351) when they observe the suffering
of others (Tsui, 2013). Furthermore, compassion can promote a prosocial motivation to
alleviate the suffering of others, even at the expense of self-interests (Batson & Shaw, 1991).
Hypothesis 1: Compassion positively influences prosocial motivation.
2.2 Three Cognitive Processes between Prosocial Motivation and Social Enterprise
Creation Behavior
Relying on the theoretical framework of Miller and colleagues (2012), we focus on three
cognitive processes related to the extent to which individuals (1) believe that their
entrepreneurship behaviors may help address social problems by alleviating the suffering of
others, (2) appreciate the costs and benefits associated with social entrepreneurship in a
prosocial way, and (3) feel competent in establishing a social venture. In the context of our
empirical investigation, these processes are respectively termed perceived meaningfulness,
appreciation of non-monetary compensation, and perceived entrepreneurial ability. We next
delineate cognitive processes, which show how these three factors enable prosocially
motivated individuals to engage in social entrepreneurship activities.
a. Perceived Meaningfulness: Broadly, meaningfulness refers to an individual’s perception
that his or her behavior is useful and valuable (Kahn, 1990). Individuals recognize the
meaningfulness of their work by judging whether it is valuable in terms of their standards
(Thomas & Velthouse, 1990). Perceived meaningfulness arises when individuals find that the
work requirements fit their beliefs and values (Hackman & Oldham, 1980) and that the work
is significant (Pratt & Ashforth, 2003). Perceived meaningfulness is a prominent cognitive
outcome that links motivation to attitudinal and behavioral upshots (Hackman & Oldham,
1980).
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Hypothesis 2: Prosocial motivation positively influences social enterprise creation
behavior through perceived meaningfulness.
b. Appreciation of Non-Monetary Compensation: Although there has been some debate on
whether the essence of social entrepreneurship is social value proposition or profitability
(Short et al., 2009), it may be more plausible to consider that appreciation of non-monetary
compensation is a cognitive route that channels prosocial motivation toward creating a social
enterprise in terms of the unique nature of prosocial and altruistic individuals. According to
previous research on the non-profit sector (e.g., Preston, 1989; Weisbrod, 1983), altruistic
individuals tend to accept lower levels of earned income. Prosocially motivated individuals
may envision other possible benefits from their prosocial behavior (Grant & Berry, 2011). For
example, engendering a public image as an altruistic person is a crucial moral reward for
prosocial behavior (Winterich, Aquino, Mittal, & Swartz, 2013), which is conceptually similar
to the prosocial identity perspective of Miller and colleagues (2012). Moreover, individuals
possessing strong levels of prosocial motivation may feel compensated as long as they
enhance societal value by addressing social problems, even if the work is not necessarily
accompanied by financial rewards. Combined with the argument of Miller and colleagues for
internalizing societal value, we thus anticipate that non-financial benefits may be appreciated
by nascent social entrepreneurs, compelling them in turn to be involved in social enterprise
creation behavior.
Hypothesis 3: Prosocial motivation positively influences social enterprise creation
behavior through appreciation of non-monetary compensation.
c. Perceived Entrepreneurial Ability. We presume that prosocially motivated individuals who
perceive that they would be successful social entrepreneurs will actually be involved in the
process of creating social enterprises. Strong prosocial motivation enhances an individual’s
confidence in proactively addressing the suffering of others (Batson, Sager, Garst, Kang,
Rubchinsky, & Dawson, 1997). This occurs because a prosocial mind enables individuals to
be receptive to diverse information and situations, and promotes a willingness to broaden their
perspective by stimulating them to engage in cognitive processes in an integrative way (Miller
et al., 2012). In fact, according to the broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 1998, 2001), a
positive mindset helps individuals to be flexible, creative, open to various information, and
effective in dealing with cognitive demands. Thus, we posit that by broadening cognitive and
behavioral repertoires, prosocial motivation is likely to assist individuals in developing and
maintaining optimism and confidence about being able to successfully establish and manage a
social enterprise. Accordingly, we hypothesize that prosocially motivated individuals with
greater levels of confidence in their entrepreneurial ability to create social value will exert
greater efforts to establish social enterprises in market-based organizations.
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Hypothesis 4: Prosocial motivation positively influences social enterprise creation
behavior through perceived entrepreneurial ability.
3. Methods
3.1 Sample and Procedure
We analyzed data collected from individuals who were the attendees in 28 social
entrepreneurship training programs provided by The Korean Social Enterprise Promotion
Agency (KSEPA) during a period of time from 2011 to 2014. The objective of these programs
is to help individuals to develop and create viable business models for social enterprises and to
realize their pursuit of social values. These individuals are regarded as nascent social
entrepreneurs, because attending a training program is a gestation activity for creating a social
enterprise, which is a criterion in defining a nascent entrepreneur (Davidsson & Honig, 2003).
Our online survey was administered during the summer 2014. The link to the online survey
was electronically sent to 28 program managers, and subsequently forwarded to a total of 910
trainees. 187 responses were collected, resulting in a response rate of 21%. After excluding
incomplete surveys, our final sample was comprised of 179 respondents. Of the 179
respondents, 44% are female and 60% affiliate themselves with a religion. 48% of the
respondents have start-up experience. The average age is 37.7 years (s.d. = 11.5).
3.2 Measures
Respondents were first asked to state any specific social issues or business ideas that led
them to a social entrepreneurship training program. This initial description was intended to
remind respondents of their previous motives and behaviors in seeking to create a social
enterprise. They were then instructed to respond to our survey items based on this description.
The original English items were translated to Korean, and data was collected using the
Korean survey. One of the authors, who is fluent in Korean and English, blindly translated the
original English survey into Korean. Three Ph.D. students from a top business school in South
Korea reviewed the Korean survey and finalized it for readability.
Unless otherwise mentioned, self-questionnaires were reported on a 5-point Likert-type
scale (with scores ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree).
a. Compassion: We measured compassion for beneficiaries (alpha = .87) with five items,
including: (1) “It’s important to take care of the vulnerable people who may be the
beneficiaries or customers of my social enterprise idea,” (2) “When I see someone, who may
be the potential beneficiaries or customers of my social enterprise idea, hurt or in need, I feel
a powerful urge to take care of them,” (3) “Taking care of others, who may be the potential
beneficiaries or customers of my social enterprise idea, gives me a warm feeling inside,” (4)
“I often notice people in need of help who may be the potential beneficiaries or customers of
my social enterprise idea,” and (5) “I feel strong compassion for the potential beneficiaries or
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customers of my social enterprise idea.” We adapted the five-item measure of compassion
from the dispositional positive emotion scales suggested by Shiota and colleagues (2006), and
then, the original items were modified to capture the respondents’ compassion for potential
social enterprise customers (for this and other measures, modification is denoted in italics).
b. Prosocial motivation: The four-item measure for prosocial motivation (Grant, 2008), which
was adapted from the self-regulation scales of Ryan and Connell (1989), was modified and
used to measure the prosocial motivation of potential social entrepreneurs (alpha = .91). These
items are: (1) “I am motivated to realize my social enterprise idea because I care about
benefiting others through my work,” (2) “I am motivated to realize my social enterprise idea
because I want to help others through my work,” (3) “I am motivated to realize my social
enterprise idea because I want to have a positive impact on others,” and (4) “I am motivated to
realize my social enterprise idea because it is important to me to do good for others through
my work.”
c. Perceived meaningfulness: Perceived meaningfulness (alpha = .88) was measured with
three items, including: (1) “My job activities to realize my social enterprise idea are
personally meaningful to me,” (2) “The work I do to realize my social enterprise idea is
meaningful to me,” and (3) “The work I do to realize my social enterprise idea is very
important to me.” The original items were adapted from Spreitzer (1995) and modified to
measure perceived meaningfulness of nascent social entrepreneurs.
d. Appreciation of non-monetary compensation: Two items (alpha = .67) were developed to
measure appreciation of non-monetary compensation among respondents. As discussed above,
non-monetary compensation can be measured by two proxies, including internalization of the
societal value created to one’s own utility and acceptance of lower levels of monetary income.
Thus, our items include: (1) “I feel compensated if I create societal value or have an impact
through realizing my social enterprise idea” and (2) “I willingly accept low personal income as
long as I create societal value or have an impact through realizing my social enterprise idea.”
e. Perceived entrepreneurial ability: Perceived entrepreneurial ability (alpha = .90) was
measured using the original six items from the perceived behavioral control scales of Liñán
and Chen (2009). These items are: (1) “To start a firm and keep it working would be easy for
me,” (2) “I am prepared to start a viable firm,” (3) “I can control the creation process of a new
firm,” (4) “I know the necessary practical details to start a firm,” (5) “I know how to develop
an entrepreneurial project,” and (6) “If I tried to start a firm, I would have a high probability of
succeeding.” Factors from these items indicate the extent to which an individual is confident
in creating a new venture.
f. Social enterprise creation behavior: We measured actual progress in creating a social
enterprise with seven items for representative gestation activities adapted from the Wave A
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questionnaire of the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED) 2 (see
http://www.psed.isr.umich.edu/psed/documentation). These items include: (1) “Have you
prepared a business plan?,” (2) “Have you received the first outside funding for the new
business?,” (3) “Have you prepared any physical space for the new business?,” (4) “Have you
registered the new business with the appropriate government agency?,” (5) “Has the product
or service that the new business will offer been developed?,” (6) “Have marketing or
promotional efforts been started for the product or service?,” and (7) “Has the first income
been received from the sale of goods or services for the new business?” Respondents rated
these items with two dummy variables (0 = no; 1 = yes). We calculated the index of social
enterprise creation behavior by aggregating scores of these items, ranging from zero (no
actions at all) to seven points (complete founding of a social enterprise). Rather than using a
dichotomous value (yes versus no), this calculated index allows us to measure the extent to
which each nascent social entrepreneur had actually engaged in creating a social enterprise to
realize the social values of which they were in pursuit.
g. Control variables: In order to better assess our hypothesized model and avoid alternative
interpretations of our findings, we controlled for gender (0 = male; 1 = female), affiliation
with religion (0 = no; 1 = yes), start-up experience (0 = no; 1 = yes), education for social
enterprise (0 = no; 1 = yes), and perceived influence of public support (“To what extent do you
think public support has influenced your consideration of founding a social enterprise?,” with
scores ranging from 1 = not influential at all to 5 = very influential). Some studies (Crant,
1996; Liñán & Chen, 2009) have found that nascent entrepreneurs are male-dominant. Other
demographic variables were not considered in our analysis, because previous studies have
reported inconsistent evidence on the linkages between most demographic factors and the
intentions and actions of entrepreneurship (Shook, Priem, & McGee, 2003). The self-
affiliation of individuals with a religion has been known to encourage prosocial and altruistic
behaviors (Saroglou, Pichon, Trompette, Verschueren, & Dernelle, 2005; Sprecher & Fehr,
2005), as well as to emphasize empathy as a core virtue, which is a significant antecedent of
prosocial motivation (Lam, 2002). Past studies (Davidsson & Honig, 2003; Krueger, 1993;
Mair & Noboa, 2006) have indicated that start-up experience is significantly related to
entrepreneurship. The relationship between education and entrepreneurship has not been
consistent, but business-related education has been shown to have a robust relationship with
enterprise creation behaviors (Davidsson & Honig, 2003). Given that most of the respondents
(85%) have college degrees, we thus decided to control for social enterprise-specific education
rather than the general education level of respondents. Social support is the factor that enables
the process of social entrepreneurship within a larger context (Mair & Noboa, 2006).
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3.3 Common Method Variance Check
There might be potential common method biases in our data, because the data were
collected from survey items imbued with social desirability and responded to by a single
source at a single time (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). To address this
potential issue, we examined any misleading results emanating from common method
variances in two ways. First, we conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with
maximum-likelihood estimation procedures in order to compare the one-factor model and our
hypothesized five-factor model (i.e., compassion, prosocial motivation, perceived
meaningfulness, appreciation of non-monetary compensation, and perceived entrepreneurial
ability). According to Kline (2005), an acceptable model fit is inferred with values of χ²/df
ratio lower than 3, comparative fit index (CFI) and incremental fit index (IFI) greater than .90,
and root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) less than or equal to .08. Table 1
shows the results of model composition between our hypothesized model and the alternatives.
The results indicate that our hypothesized five-factor model produced an acceptable and
significantly better fit (χ²[df = 80, n = 179] = 170.4, χ²/df = 2.13, CFI = .95, IFI = .95; RMSEA
= .08) to the data, whereas the fit indices of the alternative models are not acceptable. For
instance, the one-factor model did not yield an acceptable fit (χ²[df = 90, n = 179] = 771.8,
χ²/df = 8.58, CFI = .61, IFI = .61, RMSEA = .21).
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Insert Table 1 about here
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On balance, the results of CFA and a marker variable test show that common method biases
are not problematic in our data.
3.4 Analysis
Our theoretical model presupposes that compassion invokes prosocial motivation, which in
turn leads to social enterprise creation behavior through three mediation paths (i.e., perceived
meaningfulness, appreciation of non-monetary compensation, and perceived entrepreneurial
ability). Therefore, a bootstrap analysis based on the Monte Carlo method following the
procedures recommended by Preacher, Zyphur, and Zhang (2010) was performed to provide
the most robust evidence on the significance and confidence interval (CI) values of the indirect
effects.
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4. Results
Means, standard deviations, and correlations of variables are summarized in Table 2. The
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patterns of correlations are mostly consistent with prior theories and empirical evidence.
Social enterprise creation behavior turned out to have moderate positive correlations with all
the antecedents considered in this study. Compassion is strongly correlated with prosocial
motivation. As expected, start-up experience is positively correlated with religious affiliation
and social enterprise creation behavior, but it is negatively correlated with gender (i.e., female).
Table 3 presents a summary of validity and reliability tests to determine the measurement
properties of our questionnaire. The results show that all factor loadings were statistically
significant at p < .001, ranging from .76 to .89 for compassion, .76 to .87 for prosocial
motivation, .80 to .89 for perceived meaningfulness, .62 to .83 for appreciation of non-
monetary compensation, and .79 to .96 for perceived entrepreneurial ability. We further
checked the construct validity of the proposed model by calculating average variance extracted
(AVE) and composite reliability (CR) values. All AVEs were over .5, indicating that all the
latent constructs obtained convergent validity (Hulland, 1999). All CRs were over .7 (Nunnally,
1978), which confirms that the latent constructs showed convergent validity representing the
internal consistency of scales. The discriminant validity was assessed by comparing the AVEs
and squared interconstruct correlation estimates (SICs). The results showed that all AVEs are
greater than the corresponding SICs, and thus all the latent constructs fulfilled discriminant
validity (Fornell & Larcker, 1981).
We found a strong positive linkage between both variables (ß = .77, p < .001), thus
supporting Hypothesis 1.
Hypotheses 2, 3, and 4 proposed indirect effects of prosocial motivation on social
enterprise creation behavior through three cognitive processes, including perceived
meaningfulness, appreciation of non-monetary compensation, and perceived entrepreneurial
ability, respectively. Prosocial motivation was found to positively relate to all three cognitive
processes, including perceived meaningfulness (ß = .62, p < .001), appreciation of non-
monetary compensation (ß = .63, p < .001), and perceived entrepreneurial ability (ß = .34, p
< .001). However, it was demonstrated that perceived meaningfulness (ß = .22, p < .01) and
perceived entrepreneurial ability (ß = .23, p < .01) appeared to be positively associated with
social enterprise creation behavior, whereas appreciation of non-monetary compensation is not
significantly related to it (ß = .05, ns). Consequently, Hypotheses 2 and 4 were supported, but
Hypothesis 3 was rejected.
Finally, in order to ascertain the significance of the indirect effects of the fully mediated
relationships, we performed a parametric bootstrap procedure with 20,000 Monte Carlo
replications for the mediation role of the three cognitive processes with controls. The results of
the bootstrap tests appear in Table 4, showing the significant mediation effects of perceived
meaningfulness (Hypothesis 2; indirect effect = .16, p < .01, 95% CI = [.05, .31]) and
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entrepreneurial ability (Hypothesis 4; indirect effect = .07, p < .01, 95% CI = [.02, .15])
between prosocial motivation and social enterprise creation behavior. Although not
hypothesized, our additional bootstrap analysis revealed the sequential mediations of prosocial
motivation, perceived meaningfulness (indirect effect = .17, p < .01, 95% CI = [.05, .31]), and
perceived entrepreneurial ability (indirect effect = .07, p < .01, 95% CI = [.02, .16]) between
compassion and social enterprise creation behavior. The bootstrapping results thus provide
supporting evidence for Hypotheses 2 and 4.
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5. Conclusion
This research explores the antecedents of social entrepreneurship. Building on a
psychological framework involving affect, motivation, and cognition as three key drivers for
social enterprise creation behaviors, we suggest that compassion inspires prosocially
motivated individuals to create social enterprises through three cognitive processes of
perceived meaningfulness, appreciation of non-monetary compensation, and perceived
entrepreneurial ability. As one of the first empirical studies to analyze a large sample of
working adults, our work contributes to the social entrepreneurship literature by providing
empirical knowledge on the psychological processes of social enterprise creation behavior.
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Table 1: Comparison of Hypothesized and Alternative Models
Model χ2a df Δχ2 χ²/df IFI CFI RMSEA
Hypothesized five-factor model 170.4 80 ― 2.13 .95 .95 .08
An alternative four-factor modelb 330.5 84 160.1*** 3.93 .86 .86 .13
An alternative four-factor modelc 275.3 84 104.9*** 3.28 .89 .89 .11
An alternative three-factor modeld 573.2 87 402.8*** 6.59 .72 .72 .18
The alternative one-factor modele 771.8 90 601. 4*** 8.58 .61 .61 .21
a All chi-square statistics are significant at p < .05.
b Combining compassion and perceived meaningfulness
c Combining compassion and prosocial motivation
d Combining perceived meaningfulness, appreciation of non-monetary compensation, and perceived entrepreneurial ability
e Combining all variables
*** p < .001.
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Table 2: Descriptive Statistics and Correlations
Variable Mean s.d. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
1. Gender .44 .50 ―
2. Religious affiliation .60 .49 .07 ―
3. Start-up experience .48 .50 -.17* .16* ―
4. Education for social enterprise .85 .36 -.10 .01 -.00 ―
5. Perceived influence of public
support 3.65 1.19 .08 -.13 -.13 .01 ―
6. Compassion 4.21 .66 .00 .17* .18* -.01 .03 ―
7. Prosocial motivation 4.28 .64 -.04 .17* .09 -.05 .06 .68** ―
8. Perceived meaningfulness 4.52 .59 -.11 .02 .04 .09 .16* .52** .54** ―
9. Appreciation of non-monetary
compensation 3.70 .91 -.16* .08 .12 -.01 .10 .41** .49** .29** ―
10. Perceived entrepreneurial
ability 3.37 .87 -.20** .01 .13 -.03 .06 .29** .26** .18* .47** ―
11. Social enterprise creation
behavior 2.90 2.46 -.06 .09 .18* .12 .14 .19* .22** .30** .27** .32* ―
a n = 179.
* p < .05. ** p < .01.
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Table 3: A Summary of Convergent and Discriminant Validity Tests
Scale Factor loading
Average
variance
extracted
Composite
reliability
Squared interconstruct correlation
1 2 3 4 5
1. Compassion
Parcel 1 .76***
.70 .88 ― Parcel 2 .85***
Parcel 3 .89***
2. Prosocial motivation
Item 1 .76***
.70 .89 .57 ― Item 2 .87***
Item 3 .83***
Item 4 .88***
3. Perceived meaningfulness
Item 1 .85***
.71 .90 .35 .37 ― Item 2 .89***
Item 3 .80***
4. Appreciation of non-monetary
compensation
Item 1 .83*** .54 .71 .27 .39 .12 ―
Item 2 .62***
5. Perceived entrepreneurial ability
Parcel 1 .79***
.72 .90 .12 .10 .04 .35 ― Parcel 2 .96***
Parcel 3 .79*** a n = 179.
*** p < .001.
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Table 4: Bootstrap Tests for Mediation
Indirect paths
Indirect
effect
Lower
level
95% CI
Upper
level
95% CI
Prosocial motivation → perceived meaningfulness → social
enterprise creation behavior .16** .05 .31
Prosocial motivation → appreciation of non-monetary
compensation → social enterprise creation behavior .06 -.09 .24
Prosocial motivation → perceived entrepreneurial ability → social
enterprise creation behavior .07** .02 .15
Compassion → prosocial motivation → perceived meaningfulness
→ social enterprise creation behavior .17** .05 .31
Compassion → prosocial motivation → appreciation of non-
monetary compensation → social enterprise creation behavior .06 -.09 .25
Compassion → prosocial motivation → perceived entrepreneurial
ability → social enterprise creation behavior .07** .02 .16
a n = 179; bootstrap resamples = 20,000; bias-corrected percentile method; two-tailed significance.
** p < .01.
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Figure 1: Final Results of Structural Equation Modeling Analysis
a n = 179. Standardized path coefficients are reported. For ease of presentation, effects of control variables are not reported.
b Gender, religious affiliation, education for social enterprise, and perceived influence of public support were controlled.
c Gender and perceived influence of public support were controlled.
d Gender and start-up experience were controlled.
e Start-up experience, education for social enterprise, and perceived influence of public support were controlled.
** p < .01. *** p < .001.
Compassion Prosocial motivation
R2 = .60
Social enterprise
creation behaviore
R2 = .21
Perceived
meaningfulnessb
R2 = .42
Appreciation of non-
monetary
compensationc
R2 = .43
Perceived
entrepreneurial abilityd
R2 = .16
.77*** .63***
.34***
.62***
.05 ns
.23**
.22**