Spatial and temporal characteristics, spatial clustering and governance strategies for regional development of social enterprises in China

Social enterprises are a powerful starting point for achieving Common Prosperity. Expanding the scale of social enterprises in China is conducive to promoting sustainable social development. This study uses exploratory spatial data analysis methods to systematically analyze the spatiotemporal pattern, clustering characteristics and impact mechanism of the development of social enterprises in provincial administrative regions in China. The research has found that provincial social enterprises in China showed a random distribution pattern from 2015 to 2018, and showed significant negative spatial correlation from 2019 to 2022, forming a local spatial pattern of "low ones consistently low, high ones consistently high", with obvious path and spatial dependencies as well as regional isolation effects; From 2015 to 2022, the core density of provincial social enterprises showed a significant "unipolar" phenomenon, exhibiting significant spatial imbalance. Based on the TOE framework, each province and city can be divided into three clusters: demonstration provinces and cities for the development of social enterprises, starting provinces and cities for social enterprises, and lagging provinces and cities for the development of social enterprises. The first classification presents characteristics of dispersion and cross domain, while the other two categories have strong regional continuity. The core driving factors that affect the spatial differentiation of social enterprise development have regional differences, among which the decisive factor is government policy support, and the interaction factor has an enhanced effect on provincial spatial differentiation compared to a single factor. Sorting out the development characteristics of social enterprises is conducive to promoting the large-scale development of social enterprises and promoting cooperation and dialogue with other countries.