Post-Materialism as a Cultural Factor Influencing Entrepreneurial Activity across Nations
Year: 2002
Type: preprint
Abstract: The study of the determinants of entrepreneurship at the country level\\nhas been dominated by economic influences. The relative stability of \\ndifferences in levels of entrepreneurship across coun-tries suggests\\nthat other forces such as certain institutional and/or cultural \\nfactors are at play. The objective of this paper is to explore how \\npost-materialism explains differences in entrepreneurial activity \\nacross countries. Entrepreneurial activity is defined as the percent \\nof a country?s popula-tion that is self-employed, using a broad \\ndefinition that also includes CEOs of both unincorporated and legally \\nincorporated establishments. The measure for post-materialism is based \\nupon Ingle-hart?s four-item post-materialism index. Because of the \\nknown interactions between economic and cultural factors found in \\nprevious research, a set of economic and cultural factors is included\\nto provide a clearer picture of the independent role post-materialism \\nplays in prediction of self-employment levels. In particular, education, \\nlife satisfaction, church attendance and political (left or right) \\nextremism are used as control variables in our analyses using data of 14 \\nOECD countries over in recent period. Findings confirm the significance\\nof post-materialism in predicting self-employment even when controlling\\nfor economic and cultural factors. However, strong covariation between\\npost-materialism and other cultural factors makes it difficult to \\nclearly discriminate be-tween the effects.
Authors: Lorraine Uhlaner, Roy Thurik, Jan Hutjes
Institution: Erasmus University Rotterdam
Language: English
Subfield: Management of Technology and Innovation
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2156133880