Building a scale to measure individual social entrepreneurship orientation (ISEO) of forest students in Latin America

Abstract

Deforestation and poverty are problems that have gained the attention of governments, researchers, and international agendas. To fight these problems, the World Economic Forum suggested 15 transitions in three socio-economic systems that, if carried out, would allow the building of more resilient societies and generate up to 395 million jobs by 2030. Latin America (LA) has a great potential to implement transitions in the forest land and agriculture sector that will create jobs and enhance people's quality of life. The forestry sector of LA is mainly based on the timber market, and its contribution to the GDP is exiguous despite the region's natural richness. In addition, the region's university forest programs are characterized as timber oriented and have limited content on entrepreneurship and non-timber forest products concepts. Therefore, to implement the transitions suggested to create jobs and reduce poverty, there is a need to identify if forest students have the desire to engage in the sustainable forestry business. This study aimed to develop a scale to measure individual social entrepreneurship orientation; experts' interviews and a sample of 640 forest students from 13 countries of LA were used to create the items and the scale, respectively. A second sample of 1233 forest students from 10 countries was used to evaluate the scale. The final scale comprises 15 items in 6 dimensions: innovativeness, risk-taking, proactiveness, ethics, universalism, and benevolence.