Social Innovation for Sustainable Development

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss the essence of social innovation, to disclose the importance of social innovation in the realization of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), and to examine the relationship between social innovation and Sustainable Development in a panel of 11 European countries over the period 2015–2019. Social innovation is an extremely important factor dealing with societal challenges, from the national to global scales, as society is aging, people suffer from chronic diseases, alcohol, drugs, they are confronted with poverty and social exclusion, families face violence, and environmental problems also affect modern society. In this context, social innovation can become an effective way of addressing existing problems and preventing their deepening in the future as social innovation works across the globe and supports all 17 SDGs helping to create new ways and encouraging systems for sustainable development. The results of the regression analysis revealed that there is a positive and statistically significant relationship between sustainable development and social innovation. This finding is robust to the inclusion of different control variables into regression analysis.