Entrepreneurship in the Age of Social Media

Abstract

Abstract Social media is ubiquitous and continuously evolving. This study investigates the impact of social media on the intention toward entrepreneurship/self-employment. Further, we explore the moderating effect of social media on the relationships between women, self-efficacy and leisure activities on intention toward entrepreneurship/self-employment using a survey-based dataset. We find that the ability to take advantage of social media within an entrepreneurial context does not necessarily mean that an individual is propelled towards entrepreneurship, however proactive individuals are able to exhibit this characteristic, as are creative women. A counter-intuitive finding is that entrepreneurship and conventional organizational employment choices are not mutually exclusive. While risk aversion inhibits entrepreneurship as expected, contextual conditions such as being married or being employed affects men and women differently.