Empathy, societal moral obligation, self-efficacy, social support, innovativeness and social entrepreneurial behavior: perceived desirability as mediator

Globally interest on social entrepreneurship research is increasing day by day for its many folds societal implications. The main objective of this study is to examine the factors influencing social entrepreneurial behavior. Through extensive literature review, five factors namely empathy, moral obligation, self-efficacy, social support, and innovativeness have been extracted to investigate their influence on social entrepreneurial behaviour. Perceived desirability is also included in the study to explore its meditating effect in the relationship between the five determinants and social entrepreneurial behaviour. The population of this research consists of people who are involved in the social entrepreneurial activities in Bangladesh. Responses have been gathered through a structured questionnaire survey with five point likert scale. The Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS SEM) approach has been used to analyze the collected data with the support of smart PLS software 2.0M3. The hypotheses testing results reveal that the five determinants namely empathy (β, 0.103; p, 0.020), moral obligation (β, 0.389; p, 0.000), self-efficacy (β, 0.438; p, 0.000), social support (β, 0.122; p, 0.016), and innovativeness (β, 0.230; p, 0.015) play vital roles to the development of social entrepreneurial behavior. All the determinants are positively and significantly correlated with social entrepreneurial behaviour. These five determinants were again tested to see their effect on perceived desirability. It has been found that moral obligation (β, 0.260; p, 0.000), social support (β, 0.149; p, 0.024), and innovativeness (β, 0.385; p, 0.000) have strong positive influence on perceived desirability to get involved in social entrepreneurial behavior. Results of mediating effect test reveal that perceived desirability mediates the relationship between empathy (β, 0.119; p, 0.045), and social entrepreneurial behaviour; social support (β, 0.103; p, 0.048), and social entrepreneurial behaviour; innovativeness (β, 0.162; p, 0.021), and social entrepreneurial behavior. The findings contribute to the existing body of knowledge by exploring the factors influencing social entrepreneurial behavior. This study’s findings also contribute by expanding Mair and Noboa’s (2006) model in understanding social entrepreneurial behavior. It also adds some effects in the social cognitive theory in explaining social entrepreneurial behavior. Finally, a model has been developed incorporating the findings of this study and the model is named as EMSSID which stands for empathy (E), moral obligation (M), self-efficacy (S), social support (S), innovativeness (I) and perceived desirability (D). This model bears deep significance in the field of social entrepreneurship both in theoretical and practical aspects.