What motivates ecopreneurs to start businesses?

Abstract

Purpose

Ecopreneurs are those entrepreneurs who start for‐profit businesses with strong underlying green values and who sell green products or services. This is an emerging field where research is still in its infancy. Research has been called for to understand the factors that motivate these ecopreneurs to start businesses – and that is the focus of this study. The aim of this paper is to compare the findings with results of extant literature on entrepreneurial motivations.

Design/methodology/approach

This study comprises 14 in‐depth case studies of ecopreneurial companies in New Zealand in 2008. Participants were interviewed in a face‐to‐face, semi‐structured format. In total, 88 secondary sources such as media reports, industry statistics, and information from company web sites were also collected.

Findings

Ecopreneurs were motivated by five factors: their green values; earning a living; passion; being their own boss; and seeing a gap in the market. Ecopreneurs appear to have quite similar motivations to entrepreneurs in general, aside from their green motivations. They had lower level financial motivations than have been found in prior research on entrepreneurs. The ecopreneurs were primarily pulled into entrepreneurship, which bodes well for their ongoing success. The paper presents a number of contributions to both the ecopreneurship and entrepreneurship literatures.

Research limitations/implications

The small sample is a potential limitation and the country context may also influence the findings.

Originality/value

This is one of the largest samples of ecopreneurs to date. Given the emerging nature of the field of ecopreneurship, this study's conclusions require further research and testing. A total of 11 such suggestions for future research are made.

Citation

Kirkwood, J. and Walton, S. (2010), "What motivates ecopreneurs to start businesses?", International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 204-228. https://doi.org/10.1108/13552551011042799