Study On The Mechanism Of Peasant Entrepreneurship Based On Social Embedded Perspective In Rural Area

At present, both the academia and government have paid much attention on peasant entrepreneurship. As an important force to relieve the poverty, increase the income and employment, the peasant entrepreneurship plays a critical role in shortening the gap between urban and rural areas. Therefore, it has become a significant measure that the peasants are encouraged to start their own businesses to solve the issues concerned with "agriculture, rural area and farmer’". However, existing researches still cannot give reasonable explanations for the problems of "why can some peasants successfully establish new businesses" and "how do the peasants start new businesses in rural areas".On the basis of the entrepreneurship theory, this paper constructs a theoretical framework of peasant entrepreneurship from the perspective of social embeddedness theory. Meanwhile, empirical analysis is conducted with the field research data. This paper is to answer five critical problems in explaining the peasant entrepreneurship mechanism in rural area:(1) What situation can make peasants have more intention to become entrepreneurs in rural area?(2) Why some peasants can recognize entrepreneurship opportunities while others cannot?(3) After recognizing the entrepreneurial opportunities, under what condition the peasants are more likely to make entrepreneurial decision?(4) How could peasant entrepreneurs get external resources that are needed for starting businesses?(5) What are the critical factors that affect the entrepreneurial performance of the peasants in rural areas and how these factors influence the performance?This paper concludes the followings through the deep research on the above five problems.(1) Entrepreneurial atmosphere in rural area, entrepreneurial models, social network support and entrepreneurial experience have positive effects on peasants’ entrepreneurial intentions. Once the supportive entrepreneurial atmosphere is formed in rural community, entrepreneurial intentions of the peasants will be strengthened; the more successful entrepreneurs in social network, the higher entrepreneurial intentions will they have; strong relationship support can enhance the peasants’ entrepreneurial intentions; the peasants that have former entrepreneurial experience are much more likely to become entrepreneurs.(2) Important factors that affect opportunity recognition of peasants’ include the discussion network size, tie strength, sales working experience and entrepreneurial experience. The effect of opportunity recognition is associated with network size and peasants with stronger social relationship will be more likely to recognize opportunities. The more successful entrepreneurs in the rural community, the more possibilities the peasants can recognize the entrepreneurial opportunities. Peasants’ sales experience or entrepreneurial experience is helpful to improve their recognition possibility of entrepreneurial opportunities.(3) Important elements that push peasants to make the entrepreneurial decision include the peasants’entrepreneurial models, social network support and former management and working experience in certain industry. The more successful entrepreneurs in his social network, the more possibilities they have to make entrepreneurial decisions. Social network support is beneficial to improve the possibilities for peasants to conduct entrepreneurial activities. Peasants with management working experience or working experience in certain industry are more likely to develop entrepreneurial opportunities.(4) it is shown that the peasant entrepreneurs’network characteristics, social skills and networking activities play a vital role in their acquisition of entrepreneurial resources The effect of resources acquisition is associated with network size and tie strength is a major factor that produces influences on the efficiency of resources acquisition. Network size and tie strength exert different influences on the acquisition of different entrepreneurial resources. The former influences the acquisition of material resources and information resources, however, the latter simply acts on material resources. Peasant entrepreneurs’social skills also exert effects on the acquisition of entrepreneurial resources. It is also found that networking activities of peasant entrepreneurs bring positive but marginal decrease influence on resources acquisition(5) Initial entrepreneurial performance is significantly affected by the action network size of the peasant entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial models, social skills and working experience in certain industry. The more help the peasant entrepreneurs get, the better entrepreneurial performance will be. The peasant entrepreneurs would have better performance if they have successful entrepreneurs in their strong ties. New business performance will be improved if the peasant entrepreneurs possess good social skills. Initial entrepreneurial performance will be better if the peasant entrepreneurs have working experience in certain industry.In general, this paper examines the peasant entrepreneurship based on the perspective of social embeddedness theory and better combines the theoretical analysis and empirical study. This paper primarily explains the internal mechanism of peasant entrepreneurship in rural areas in China. Compared with existing studies of peasant entrepreneurship. this paper can contribute to the following aspects.Firstly, it is discovered in this paper that the entrepreneurial atmosphere in rural area will not directly affect the entrepreneurial decision of the peasants. Instead. it has positive affect on peasants’ entrepreneurial intention. Therefore, the micro-mechanism of culture influence on peasants’ entrepreneurial activities is revealed and can be a supplement to the existing document. Secondly, research results show that entrepreneurial models in rural areas help improve the recognition of entrepreneurial opportunities for peasants and successful entrepreneurs in strong ties are beneficial to initial entrepreneurial performance. This discovery is helpful to promote the research on the relationship between entrepreneurial models and entrepreneurial activities currently with certain new theoretical conception. Thirdly, This research has discovered the different influences of network size and tie strength on the efficiency and effect of resource acquisition of various kinds. This discovery supports and strengthens the theoretical argument that social networks act upon entrepreneurial activities. On the other hand, it has complemented to the previous studies to some extent. Finally, this paper verifies that social skills of the peasant entrepreneurs have positive influence on the efficiency and effect of entrepreneurial resources acquisition and initial entrepreneurial performance. Meanwhile, this paper extends the situational factors of social skills and entrepreneurial activities relationship and helps inspire further surveys on the internal mechanism of how social skills influence entrepreneurial activities of peasants.