Social Capital, Entrepreneurial Environment and Peasants’ Entrepreneurial Performance in Agriculture-related Businesses

Abstract

Peasants’ entrepreneurship in agriculture-related businesses is not only their responses to the policy environment of mass entrepreneurship, but also an important way to improve industrial structure in rural areas and increase peasants’ income. This paper divides the social capital of peasants into two types, namely homogeneous social capital and heterogeneous social capital, and analyzes the mechanism of social capital affecting peasants’ entrepreneurial performance in agriculture-related businesses from the perspectives of the willingness & ability of providing entrepreneurial resources and incentives & supervision. Then, based on 745 microscopic samples of peasant entrepreneurs, this paper analyzes the impact of social capital of peasants on peasants’ entrepreneurial performance in agriculture-related businesses in different environment restrictions. It comes to the following conclusions: firstly, social capital of peasants can significantly raise the availability of entrepreneurial resources and is an important factor affecting peasants’ entrepreneurial performance in agriculture-related businesses; secondly, owing to different ability of providing entrepreneurial resources and strength of incentives and supervison, heterogeneous social capital has greater effect on peasants’ entrepreneurial performance in agriculture-related businesses than homogeneous social capital; thirdly, in the entrepreneurial environment with strong constraints, the role of social capital in peasants’ entrepreneurship in agriculture-related businesses is more important. It means that the general dependence of peasants’ entrepreneurship in agriculture-related businesses on social capital may be the responses to worse entrepreneurial environment in rural areas, and currently peasants can make full use of social capital according to the features of different types of social capital to increase their entrepreneurial performance in agriculture-related businesses, but in the long run, the increase in peasants’ entrepreneurial performance in agriculture-related businesses requires governments to perfect rural entrepreneurial services system and optimize rural entrepreneurial environment.