Determinants of Social Entrepreneurship Intention: A Longitudinal Study among Youth in Higher Learning Institutions

Social entrepreneurship had been acknowledged as an important solution to highlight various social issues, which many are compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. Locally, the Malaysian government launched the first Social Entrepreneurship policy framework in 2015 with an allocation of RM 20 million to produce 1000 social enterprises by 2018. However, as of June 2022, the reported number of social enterprises in Malaysia was only 414. This raised questions on the viability of the agenda. Nevertheless, in April 2022, the government expressed continued political will by launching the Malaysian Social Entrepreneurship Action Plan 2030 (SEMy2030). To ensure success, it is important to understand the determinants of social entrepreneurship intention, especially among youth, the leaders of tomorrow. A previous study on another emerging economy observed changes to the social entrepreneurship dynamics due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the analysis for this study was performed following a longitudinal design on a sample of 486 respondents before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings found Social Awareness, Self-Efficacy, Prior Entrepreneurship Experience, and Cosmopolitanism consistently to be significant determinants of Social Entrepreneurship Intention both pre- and post-pandemic. Meanwhile, Perceived Social Support became significant post-pandemic. Furthermore, gender was found to have a moderating role in several relationships. These insights can lead to the formulation of effective policies and programs to encourage, as well as enable, new generations of social entrepreneurs.