Rural entrepreneurship and job creation: the hybrid identity of village-cadre-entrepreneurs

Poverty alleviation has been one of the most important issues in human society, especially in rural areas. As a critical solution to settle rural poverty, entrepreneurship increases rural entrepreneurs' income and creates job opportunities in rural communities. However, why rural entrepreneurs have different employment choices remains underexplored. This research focuses on village cadres' entrepreneurship in China, exploring how the hybrid identity of village-cadre-entrepreneurs interacts and further influences their motivation to create more jobs. Furthermore, we theorize how contextual factors, such as village isolation, lineage group, and regional collective mobilization, shape the logic of the employment strategy resulting from this hybrid identity. Based on a nationwide representative sample comprising 4346 rural entrepreneurs and their enterprises, our findings indicate that village-cadre-entrepreneurs are motivated to provide more work opportunities within the system of village self-governance. With job creation, village-cadre-entrepreneurs preserve and strengthen the “patron” image of village-cadre identity and mitigate the “businessman” image of entrepreneur identity. Further to this, the positive effect of village-cadre-entrepreneurs offering more work opportunities via entrepreneurial activities is more prominent when villages i) are more isolated from the external environment, ii) have more lineage groups, or iii) are in areas with more collective mobilization. This study highlights the impact of rural governance logic in rural entrepreneurial activities and the significance of village-cadre-entrepreneurs' role in job creation and rural poverty alleviation.