Identifying Social Entrepreneurial Behaviour in Farmers participation in Alternative Food Network

Abstract

The concept of social entrepreneurship is growing rapidly and attracting increased attention from research institutions and business schools around the world to understand how these satisfy the needs of communities, those private and public institutions are not adequately addressing. Social entrepreneurship, identified as activity with a social objective, was used in this study as a conceptual tool to empirically examine farmer’s participation in AFNs. Using a behavioural approach, we conducted a survey in Sicily, Italy, using a questionnaire with modified items from the Edinburgh Study of Decision Making on Farms. From the results emerges that around 64% of the farmers participating in AFNs is driven by social entrepreneurial dimension.