Can start-up motives influence social-ecological resilience in community-based entrepreneurship setting? Case of coastal shrimp farmers in Sri Lanka

The aim of this paper is to understand the extent to which the start-up motives can influence social-ecological resilience in community-based entrepreneurship setting. The case study approach was used to study five coastal communities in northwestern Sri Lanka. Shrimp farmers' start-up motives include both the desire to capitalize on opportunities to utilize their resources and skills (opportunity-driven) and the need to establish satisfactory sources of income (necessity-driven). They have come up with diverse entrepreneurial responses to face various stressors and shocks by using their existing capital types and their willingness for collaboration. Farmers' coping capacity is demonstrated through their individual responses whereas adaptive and transformative capacities are demonstrated mostly through their community cooperative work. Findings also reveal that the start-up motives of small-scale shrimp farmers are less influential on their social-ecological resilience in the community setting. Instead, the key to social-ecological resilience lies with the understanding of the nature of stressors and their commitment for collective action.