Entrepreneurs who start a business to serve both self-interests and collective interests by addressing unmet social and environmental needs are usually referred to as sustainable entrepreneurs. Compared with regular entrepreneurs, we argue that sustainable entrepreneurs face specific challenges when establishing their businesses owing to the discrepancy between the creation and appropriation of private value and social value. We hypothesize that when starting a business, sustainable entrepreneurs (1) feel more hampered by perceived barriers, such as the institutional environment and (2) have a different risk attitude and perception than regular entrepreneurs. We use two waves of the Flash Eurobarometer survey on entrepreneurship (2009 and 2012), which contains information on start-up motivations, start-up barriers, and risk perceptions of approximately 3000 (prospective) business owners across 33 countries. We find that sustainable entrepreneurs indeed perceive more institutional barriers in terms of a lack of financial, administrative, and informational support at business start-up than regular entrepreneurs. Further, no significant differences between sustainable and regular entrepreneurs are found in terms of their risk attitudes or perceived financial risks. However, sustainable entrepreneurs are more likely to fear personal failure than regular entrepreneurs, which is explained by their varied and complex stakeholder relations. These insights may serve as an important signal for both governments and private capital providers in enhancing the institutional climate.

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The present cross-national study aims to explore the factors that are associated with a country's share of social start-ups in the total number of start-ups and contributes to the emerging stream of literature that explores the contextual drivers of different types of entrepreneurship. Based on data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2009, covering 49 countries, we test several theoretical perspectives, including the failure thesis/institutional void perspective, the interdependence theory/institutional support perspective, welfare state theory and supplyside theory. Multiple regression analyses are applied testing the influence of institutional factors and cultural values on the incidence of social entrepreneurial start-ups relative to other types of start-ups. Our results seem to support the institutional support perspective: the share of social start-ups in all start-ups seems to benefit from favorable institutional circumstances, in particular public sector expenditure and regulatory quality. With respect to cultural values, our results suggest that a society's level of self-expression values benefits start-up diversity in favor of a higher share of social start-ups.

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