Exploring the Landscape of Social Entrepreneurship and Crowdfunding: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

The aim of this article is to identify, synthesize, and evaluate the existing research on the nexus of the SE–crowdfunding domain. The researchers used a variety of bibliometric tools, Biblioshiny, and VOSviewer, to examine the scholarly literature on SE and crowdfunding from 2013 through 2022. The data were gathered from the Web of Science and Scopus databases, and the researchers ultimately collected 105 documents for the analysis. As can be seen from the findings, there has been a steady increase in the number of articles published in SE crowdfunding throughout the past decade. The USA seems to be the main research region for SE–crowdfunding literature. Both of the most prolific writers, Maija Renkor and Aaron H. Anglin, are also from the USA. The results also show that the Journal of Business Venturing Insights ranks first for most productive sources, followed by Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Business Horizons, Sustainability, and the Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal. The temporal diagram of co-occurrence analysis indicates that performance, impact, altruism, motivation, and commercialization are emerging topics in the SE–crowdfunding research field. Moreover, the result of the co-citation analysis found four themes in the SE–crowdfunding domain. These include ‘crowdfunding for social entrepreneurship’, ‘impact investing in social enterprises’, ‘crowdfunding as an innovative way to fund social entrepreneurship’, and ‘social innovation and crowdfunding’. In addition, the article provides a helpful starting point for policymakers and practitioners involved in obtaining funds for SE through crowdfunding by considering the associated technological, administrative, and organizational consequences.