Social Capital, Entrepreneurial Performance, and Health: An Examination of Women Entrepreneurs in a Metropolitan City, Bangladesh

Description

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21887115

Jani Parvin (Department of Economics, Begum Rokeya University, Rangpur, Bangladesh)

The study investigated how social capital influences entrepreneurial outcomes, health and well-being of women enterprises in Bangladesh. It analyses the result of data on 110 women entrepreneurs by ordered probit model. The results of the mean-comparison t-test revealed that unity, understanding, trust, togetherness, and information sharing are significantly correlated with each other and consequently lead to expansion of social capital in business. Bonding and bridging relationship remain important structural and cognitive social capital to building effective networks. Empirical findings demonstrate that trust, social support, cooperation, unity, group membership, and social networks exert significant positive effects on entrepreneurial revenue. Structural social capital such as collective engagement, collaborative ideation, and group participation, alongside cognitive factors like trust and information sharing, enhance entrepreneurs economic and management capacity. The result of social capital and self-reported health (SRH) reveals positive associations with employee unity, enterprise trust, and information sharing. Higher household income and savings further augment health outcomes. Results concerning psychological distress indicate that social networks, shared understanding, information exchange, employee trust, group involvement, institutional support, education, savings, and business experience significantly alleviate distress and enhance well-being of women entrepreneurs. Finally, the happiness model of female entrepreneurs underscores the positive influence of trust, income, and savings. Overall, the results highlight pivotal significance of social capital in overcoming barriers of entrepreneurship as well as improving women’s entrepreneurs financial outcome, health, and well-being in Rangpur through targeted policy support initiatives.