Do human rights violations elicit or impede social entrepreneurship?

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate two competing hypotheses about the relationship between a country’s human rights violation and social entrepreneurship entry.Design/methodology/approachUsing multilevel logistic regression with random effect, this paper tested the hypotheses on a sample of 110,460 individuals in 49 countries using data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s Adult Population Survey and the Survey of Social Entrepreneurship for the year 2009. This paper takes advantage of the Cingranelli-Richards Human Rights Data Project to measure a country’s level of human rights protection.FindingsHuman rights are positively related to social entrepreneurship entry. The findings also indicate that public sector expenditure strengthens the relationship between human rights, measured by the judiciary independence and social entrepreneurship entry.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the social entrepreneurship literature by conducting a novel empirical investigation of the direct relationship between a country’s human rights and social entrepreneurship entry.