The impact of culture on national prevalence rates of social and commercial entrepreneurship

This cross-cultural study empirically investigates the cultural determinants of macro-level social and commercial entrepreneurship from a new institutional theory perspective. This study investigates if cultural shifts in cultural values, operationalized through the World Values Survey (WVS), impact the prevalence rates of social and commercial entrepreneurship at the national level. Social and commercial entrepreneurship rates are drawn from the 2009 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and aggregated for 53 countries in this cross-sectional analysis using multivariate regression. Findings indicate that traditional societal values positively impact commercial entrepreneurship prevalence rates, but negatively impact social entrepreneurship rates. Furthermore, self-expression societal values positively impact social entrepreneurship prevalence rates.