Social Entrepreneurs, Market Dynamics, and Social Enterprise Innovation: An Empirical Study Based on the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor

Previous studies have mostly analyzed the individual traits that trigger social entrepreneurship while ignoring the impact of such traits on social enterprise innovation. This study explores the impacts of critical traits—opportunity identification capabilities, prior experience, and fear of failure—on social enterprise innovation and examines the cross-level moderating role of market dynamics. Using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey as the data source, a multilevel empirical test is conducted on 3956 social entrepreneurs from 30 economies. The results show that opportunity identification capabilities and prior experience have a positive effect on social enterprise innovation, while fear of failure has a negative effect. Moreover, the market dynamics of an economy weaken the positive relationship between prior experience and social enterprise innovation but do not affect the efficacy of opportunity identification and fear of failure. This research contributes to the literature on social enterprise innovation and extends the study of social entrepreneurs’ traits. Lastly, the practical implications and limitations of the study are also discussed.