A cross-national perspective of compassion's role in driving social entrepreneurial intentions

This study sheds light on the role of compassion in driving individuals' intentions to pursue social entrepreneurship. Drawing on the embedded agent view of the social entrepreneur, we argue that individuals (agents) are embedded in regulative, cognitive and regulatory institutions that either facilitate or inhibit the relationship between compassion and social entrepreneurial intentions. Compassion as a motive supports personal feasibility and desirability judgments of social venturing, but whether they are actualized into social entrepreneurial intentions is linked to national institutions. We test our model by means of two independent survey studies with 350 respondents from the US population (Study 1) and 223 student respondents from nine countries (Study 2). The results suggest that compassion is linked to social entrepreneurship via the intervening cognitive mechanisms of feasibility and desirability and that this relationship is moderated by national institutions. These results have theoretical implications for social entrepreneurship research and useful practical implications for investors and policy-makers.