Characteristics of the Social entrepreneur: a neoclassical perspective

Over the last decades, the concept of social entrepreneurship has been praised for its attractiveness due to its ability to provide entrepreneurial solutions to social issues. Still, research into social entrepreneurship is in a state of infancy. A lot of research into this concept is centered on the formulation of a plausible definition. Parker (2008) has taken his research a step further, by creating a theory on the concept. This theory is called the neoclassical life-cycle theory and makes assumptions on the type of people who have a higher probability to be social entrepreneurs. The theory also describes at which stage in life individuals are more probable to be social entrepreneurs. This thesis tests the neoclassical life-cycle theory. In so doing, the age distribution of social entrepreneurs is firstly tested, followed by the relationship between social entrepreneurs in different age groups and patient consuming behavior. The final subject of interest is the relationship between social entrepreneurs in different age groups and their satisfaction with household income. The data which is used is obtained from the Flash Eurobarometer survey on Entrepreneurship (No. 283) which contains information of more than 26,000 individuals of 36 countries. After binary logistic regression, the results for the age distribution of social entrepreneurs appear to be insignificant. Another finding is that younger social entrepreneurs show more patient consuming behavior and are more satisfied with their household income compared to older social entrepreneurs