Social Interaction and Family Entrepreneurship

Hu Hao; Wang Haiyan; Zhang Peiying

doi:doi:10.16538/j.cnki.jfe.2018.12.003

Summary

Since the call of Premier Li Keqiang for the " mass entrepreneurship and innovation”, the society has set off a wave of entrepreneurship for all. Among them, college students, international students and returning migrant workers are particularly prominent. Inspiring the " double innovation” vitality has also become one of the important governance goals of the government at all levels, and the effective path to seek to stimulate entrepreneurial vitality has become a hot topic of concern for policy makers and theorists. By using the latest 2016 micro-data from the China Family Tracking Survey（CFPS）, and the discrete selection model and the OLS model, the article analyzes the impact of social interaction on family entrepreneurial decision-making, and explores its mechanism. The results show that the three agent variables of social interaction: human welfare payments, communication expenditures and non-family members’ meal expenses have a positive impact on family entrepreneurial decision-making at a level of 1%. Specifically, in the case where other variables are fixed, each increase in one unit of human welfare payments, communication expenditures and non-family members’ meal expenses will increase the chances of family entrepreneurship by 1.7%, 3.7% and 3.5%.　　As far as the impact mechanism is concerned, （1）Social interaction information acquisition and social learning mechanism indicate that in areas with high entrepreneurial participation rates in districts and counties, whether it is human welfare payments, communication expenditures or non-family members’ meal expenses, entrepreneurial decision-making has had a positive impact; in areas with low entrepreneurial participation rates in districts and counties, in addition to personal spending, communication expenditures and non-family members’ meal expenses will also have a positive impact on entrepreneurial decision-making. However, from their coefficient, the social interaction coefficient of the districts with high entrepreneurial participation rates is far greater than the social interaction coefficient of the districts with low entrepreneurial participation rates, which indicates that the social interaction effect of districts and counties with high entrepreneurial participation rates is greater than that of districts and counties with low entrepreneurial participation rates, that is, the social interaction effect of districts with high participation rates in districts and counties is more obvious.（2）The relative wealth concern mechanism shows that in the regions with low income Gini coefficient, the three agency variables of social interaction have a positive impact on family entrepreneurial decision-making; in the regions with high income Gini coefficient, except for the impact of human welfare payments on family entrepreneurial decision-making, the coefficient of the other two agent variables are not significant. This shows that in areas with small income gaps, the effect of social interaction on the participation of family entrepreneurs is more obvious.（3）The financing constraint mechanism shows that social interaction helps to alleviate the financing constraints of family entrepreneurship through informal lending channels, thus effectively increasing the probability of family entrepreneurship.　　The expansive discussion shows that social interaction and network information are also channels for family entrepreneurs to obtain relevant information, and there is a mutual substitution relationship between them. We use the cross-coefficient coefficient of the two to measure this substitution relationship. The results show that the coefficient of social interaction and network information cross-term is negative. Although it is not statistically significant, the economic significance indicates the existence of this alternative relationship. The policy implication of this paper is that it provides a new policy perspective for stimulating the " double innovation” vitality. Relevant departments should fully consider the role of social interaction when formulating policies involving individual family entrepreneurship.