Sustainable agribusiness entrepreneurship during the Covid-19 crisis: the role of social capital
ISSN: 0025-1747
Article publication date: 13 April 2022
Issue publication date: 30 August 2022
Abstract
Purpose
The crucial action program of United Nations is sustainable development. In the context of lockdown and food supply chain disruptions in many developing countries due to COVID-19, sustainable agribusiness entrepreneurship (SAE) must be investigated to contribute to the global safe-food supply chain resilience. Furthermore, this pandemic might have changed cognitive social capital (i.e. perceived shared norms, civicness and community cohesiveness) and relational social capital (i.e. social trust). Therefore, this study aims to examine their role in forming agribusiness entrepreneurs’ SAE intentions under the lens of sustainable development in the pandemic context.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a mixed-methods approach with resources for structural equation modeling. A sample of 499 Vietnamese agribusiness entrepreneurs to reconcile scales and test hypothesized relationships.
Findings
The study reconciles the existing constructs’ scales and develops a new scale measuring SAE intention. The findings show that the extended theory of planned behavior (ETPB) model is an ideal theoretical framework for predicting behavioral intentions in sustainability. The study also discovers the role of cognitive social capital and relational social capital in motivating SAE intentions. Also, some managerial implications are suggested for agribusinessmen to survive and succeed during the COVID-19 crisis.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is considered the first to investigate the role of cognitive social capital and relational social capital in motivating SAE in an emerging market using the ETPB. The findings will help emerging economies, where most farmers are family-business owners or micro-scaled entrepreneurs who have been facing the increasing trend of sustainable production and consumer.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to convey their sincere appreciation to the editor and anonymous reviewers for the generous effort and time that they have kindly invested to provide highly constructive reviews that greatly helped to substantially improve the quality of the manuscript.
Conflict of interest: No conflict of interest declared.
Citation
Lang, L.D., Dong, N.T., Ferreira, J.J.M., Behl, A. and Dao, L.T. (2022), "Sustainable agribusiness entrepreneurship during the Covid-19 crisis: the role of social capital", Management Decision, Vol. 60 No. 9, pp. 2593-2614. https://doi.org/10.1108/MD-09-2021-1259
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited