What Motivates Innovative Entrepreneurs? Evidence from a Global Field Experiment
通过三项实地实验，研究创新型企业家对金钱和社会影响力信息的反应，发现女性和利他文化中的个体更受社会影响力激励，而男性和利己文化中的个体更受金钱激励。
Entrepreneurial motivation is important to the process of economic growth. However, evidence on the motivations of innovative entrepreneurs, and how those motivations differ across fundamental characteristics, remains scant. We conduct three interrelated field experiments with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Inclusive Innovation Challenge to study how innovative entrepreneurs respond to messages of money and social impact and how this varies across gender and culture. We find consistent evidence that women and individuals located in more altruistic cultures are more motivated by social-impact messages than money, whereas men and those in less altruistic cultures are more motivated by money than social impact. The estimates are not driven by differences in the type of company, its size, or other observable characteristics, but, instead, appear to come from differences in the underlying motivations of innovative entrepreneurs themselves. This paper was accepted by Joshua Gans, business strategy.