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Are Farmers in Alternative Food Networks Social Entrepreneurs? Evidence from a Behavioral Approach

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Abstract

Social entrepreneurship, individual activities with a social objective, is used in this study as a conceptual tool for empirically examining farmers’ participation in alternative food networks (AFNs). This study verifies whether their participation is driven by the social entrepreneurship dimension to satisfy social and environmental needs. We develop a more inclusive view of how social entrepreneurship is present among farmers participating in AFNs by using a behavioural approach based on three main psychological constructs: attitude, objective, and behaviour. The empirical results show that two types of farmers participate in AFNs. One type is closer to commercial entrepreneurs; the main attitudes and objectives affecting their behaviour are oriented toward profit maximization and farm progress. The second type is closer to social entrepreneurial activity; the main objectives affecting their behaviour are oriented towards satisfying social and environmental needs. The study’s results offer implications and suggest recommendations concerning social entrepreneurial practices and the motivations of the farmers who participate in AFNs.

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Notes

  1. Technical details are available upon request.

  2. The outputs of the correlations, PCA for EFAS items, PCA for EFOS items and PCA for EFIS items cited in the text are shown in “Appendix”.

  3. A PCA can be expressed through the following general formula: Yi = wi1X1 + wi2X2 + … + wipXp.

  4. The Bravais and Pearson correlation index (Borra and Hill 2004) is determined as \( \uprho_{\text{xy}} = \frac{{\upsigma_{\text{xy}} }}{{\upsigma_{\text{x}}\upsigma_{\text{y}} }} \), where σxy is the covariance of x and y, while σx and σy are, respectively, the standard deviation of x and y. The values of the correlation coefficient range between −1, when there is an inverse linear relationship, and +1, when there is a direct linear relationship. If the value of σxy is close to 0, there is no linear correlation between the variables (Levine et al. 2002).

  5. We tested the two alternative hypotheses:

    H0::

    ρxy = 0 there isn’t a linear relation.

    H1::

    ρxy ≠ 0 there is a linear relation.

    When the value of ρxy is between 0 and .3, it has a weak correlation; when between .3 and .7, it has a moderate correlation; when over .7, it has a strong correlation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural and Forest Sciences (SAF), Agricultural Economics and Policy Group, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, 13, 90128, Palermo, Italy

    Giuseppina Migliore, Giorgio Schifani, Pietro Romeo & Shadi Hashem

  2. Department of Agricultural Sciences, Agricultural Economics and Policy Group, University of Naples, Federico II, Naples, Italy

    Luigi Cembalo

Authors
  1. Giuseppina Migliore
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  2. Giorgio Schifani
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  3. Pietro Romeo
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  4. Shadi Hashem
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  5. Luigi Cembalo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Giuseppina Migliore.

Appendix

Appendix

The statistical elaborations presented in the manuscript have been carried out through IBM SPSS Statistics 19 software.

The outputs are displayed in the following tables, following the order of the results presented in the paper (Tables 2, 3, 4, 5).

Table 2 Components derived after orthogonal rotation of attitudes
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Table 3 Item loading on components derived after orthogonal rotation of objectives
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Table 4 Item loadings on component derived from aspects of farmers’ management behaviour
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Table 5 Correlation among components from the EFAS, EFOS, and EFIS
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Migliore, G., Schifani, G., Romeo, P. et al. Are Farmers in Alternative Food Networks Social Entrepreneurs? Evidence from a Behavioral Approach. J Agric Environ Ethics 28, 885–902 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-015-9562-y

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