Igniting social entrepreneurial intention through entrepreneurial social framing: Psychological effects of audience moral elevation and communal narcissism

Entrepreneurial narratives shape the audience’s engagement in social entrepreneurship, one of which is becoming a social entrepreneur oneself. We specifically examine this intention to become a social entrepreneur as an under-examined but critical outcome of entrepreneurial social framing, or emphasis on social impact in entrepreneurial narratives. Drawing on the literature on moral emotions and affective events, we propose that entrepreneurial social framing elicits the emotion of moral elevation, facilitating audience intentions of becoming a social entrepreneur. Grounded on the trait activation theory, we argue that the audience personality trait, particularly communal narcissism, strengthens the effect of moral elevation on social entrepreneurial intention. We conducted an exploratory qualitative study and two experiments to uncover and test these propositions. The results from the studies shed light on the important role of emotion and psychological traits in explicating the effect of entrepreneurial narratives on social entrepreneurial intention.