How does the entrepreneur’s socialist imprinting affect environmental entrepreneurship?

Abstract

Grounded in the environmental entrepreneurship literature and attention- based view, this study explores how entrepreneur’s imprinting affect the environmental entrepreneurship, proposing that socialist imprinting can serve as an individual’s cognition and value, which are based on the socialist doctrine, to drive to engage in entrepreneurial investment on environmental issues. Using a longitudinal dataset of Chinese entrepreneurial companies from 2006 to 2012, we found that there is a positive association between entrepreneurs’ socialist imprinting and the entrepreneurial environmental investment, which is more salient if firms are more sensitive towards government stakeholders and have a long-term strategic orientation, while less salient if they have foreign ownership. This research contributes to understanding the political ideology of entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurship, and stakeholder theory.