Environmental entrepreneurship – Bibliometric and content analysis of the subject literature based on H-Core

Abstract

Business is not only an important perpetrator of the environmental problems, but it also plays a key role in successfully addressing them. In the process of solving environmental problem not only the role of large companies but also entrepreneurs has been noticed. Environmental entrepreneurship (otherwise referred to as “ecopreneurship”) can be defined as the process of entrepreneurship applied in order to create businesses that solve environmental problems or operate sustainably. Despite the growing interest in environmental entrepreneurship, the academic literature on the subject is still in a nascent stage which justifies carrying out analyses in this area.The purpose of the study is, through a bibliometric analysis, to reflect the status of the environmental entrepreneurship field, identify key research areas and establish future directions for research. The article presents previous literature studies and intend to fill the identified gap in terms of queries, databases, research period and methodology. In particular we applied H-Classics methodology and in-depth content analysis of 318 sample articles which has not been used in previous studies.The analysis led to identifying four research sub-areas of environmental entrepreneurship within the document sample. Directions of further research are such areas of exploration as factors influencing entrepreneurial actions (external e.g. institutional factors, internal – including psychological factors) and the importance of various entities in the development of sustainable entrepreneurship (which includes ecopreneurship). There is also the need to look at entrepreneurship from multiple scientific perspectives and the necessity to carry out research eliminating the limitations of previous research projects. Due to the fact that entrepreneurship is a dynamic phenomenon, it has been stressed on several occasions that there is a need for conducting longitudinal research.