Orientation of Youth towards Social Entrepreneurship: An Empirical Study from Pakistan

The importance of Entrepreneurship has been widely acknowledged by researchers and practitioners worldwide, however, the idea of Social Entrepreneurship is still considered to be an emerging area. Entrepreneurship is vital not only because of its economic impacts but also because it helps to address issues of poverty and welfare, where it can act as a catalyst for change. The importance of social entrepreneurship is that it serves to turn a profit and find success while helping others throughout the world. They know the power of social enterprise and are eager to serve the societal and economic benefits. This study aims to identify the level of orientation of youth towards social entrepreneurship in Pakistan. The study identifies the role of various factors that affect Social Entrepreneurial Orientation and is conducted following a quantitative research strategy and survey research design where data is collected from 302 individuals. Structural Equation Modelling was used to analyze the data and to test the hypotheses. The main finding of this research is that there is an increasing trend in the orientation towards social entrepreneurship. The exogenous variables namely Perceived Educational Support, Perceived Structural Support, and Perceived Relational Support were found to have positive and significant effects on the endogenous construct of Social Entrepreneurial Orientation.