Williams, C.C. orcid.org/0000-0002-3610-1933 (2021) Evaluating entrepreneurs’ motives for participating in the informal sector in Europe. Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship, 26 (01). 2150002. ISSN 1084-9467
Abstract
Informal entrepreneurs have been viewed variously as reluctant participants in such endeavors doing so out of economic necessity because of their exclusion from formal work and welfare (structuralist theory), or as willing entrepreneurs who voluntarily exit the formal economy either as a rational economic decision (neo-liberal theory) or as social actors who do not agree with the formal rules and regulations of the state (neo-institutional theory). The aim of this paper is to evaluate these competing theorizations of entrepreneurs’ motives for participating in the informal sector. Reporting evidence from a 2019 Eurobarometer survey involving 27,565 face-to-face interviews in 28 European countries, the finding is that five percent are reluctant participants, twenty percent are willing participants doing so as a rational economic decision, 21 percent are willing participants doing so because of their disagreement with the rules and 54 percent do so for a mixture of these motives. A logistic regression analysis reveals who is more likely to engage in informal entrepreneurship and who is significantly more likely to do so for each motive. The theoretical and policy implications are then discussed.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 World Scientific Publishing Company. This is an author-produced version of a paper subsequently published in Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Informal economy; entrepreneurship; informal sector entrepreneurship; enterprise culture; tax evasion; Europe |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 25 Mar 2021 07:55 |
Last Modified: | 16 Mar 2022 01:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | World Scientific Publishing |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1142/s1084946721500023 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:172539 |