THE IMPACT OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS ON INTENTIONS TO PURSUE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Social entrepreneurship is a growing phenomenon, both in practice and in the scientific community. The main goal of this research is to examine specific personal characteristics that might support one’s decision to pursue social entrepreneurship as a career choice. The research sample consisted of 114 students of two graduate entrepreneurship programs: Economics of Entrepreneurship at the Faculty of Organization and Informatics in Varaždin, University of Zagreb; and Entrepreneurship at the Faculty of Economics, J. J. Strossmayer University of Osijek. Based on the scientific literature, we identified several potentially important personal characteristics: creativity, proactivity, compassionate love for humanity, hardship in life and moral judgement competence. These characteristics were adequately measured and compared between three groups of students: those that want to become commercial entrepreneurs, those that want to become social entrepreneurs, and those who have no entrepreneurial intentions. The methods we used were one-way ANOVA and factor analysis. Our results showed that the factor that differed the most between the observed groups was compassionate love for humanity. This factor might be the main driving force behind social entrepreneurial activities.