“Randomized Control Trial to Test the Causal Effects of Ethics of Care on Social Entrepreneurship”

This study aims to explore the causal relationship between ethics of care and social entrepreneurship. Specifically, whether greater levels of care cause individuals to prefer social entrepreneurship over regular entrepreneurship. We plan to conduct an experiment in which care values are activated in a sample of entrepreneurs through a stimulus related to a story of a person in a vulnerable situation. The experimental design allows to isolate care values from any other factor that may have an impact on decision-making around entrepreneurship and helps to identify whether care values indeed guide the decisions of entrepreneurs in preferring certain types of businesses.

This is important because it can help us to understand why people choose to support social ventures. If we can identify the factors that motivate people to care about others, we can design more effective interventions to promote social change; work on discovering effective ways to promote the value of care in society; develop strategies for recruiting and retaining social entrepreneurs; and design programs and policies to address social problems.