Making a Difference: The Relationship Between Prosocial Motivation and Social Entrepreneurial Intention, with Creativity in Social Work as a Mediating Variable

Industrialization has had a negative impact on emerging countries such as Indonesia, leading to the emergence of many unresolved socioeconomic issues. The government and business sectors, which are supposed to be capable of resolving societal challenges, have failed to do so consistently. The dissatisfaction and relative inadequacy of the public and private sectors to deal with social problems makes social entrepreneurship a foreseen solution to resolve social issues in Indonesia. Despite its importance, Indonesia’s number of entrepreneurs, particularly social entrepreneurs, remains well below that of other countries such as the United States and China. As a result, this study was carried out to determine the factors that influence the formation of social entrepreneurship intention by considering prosocial motivation and creativity components in social work. Purposive sampling was used to recruit 158 students in Indonesia for the study. SmartPLS 3.0 is used to evaluate the data using the PLS-SEM approach. Prosocial motivation and creativity in social work both positively and significantly affect social entrepreneurial intention. Moreover, creativity in social work mediates a partial relationship between prosocial motivation and social entrepreneurial intention.