Social influence over career choice: evidence from a randomized field experiment on entrepreneurial mentorship

How do different sources of social influence impact the likelihood of entrepreneurship? Using a longitudinal field experiment with a pre-test/post-test design, random assignment to an entrepreneur mentor of a student increases the likelihood of entrepreneurial careers, particularly for students whose parents were not entrepreneurs. Additional analysis shows the mentor influences the decision to join an early-stage venture, but not to become a founder. Performance data suggests that entrepreneurial influence is not encouraging “worse” entrepreneurship and may have helped students in joining or founding better-performing ventures.  This contributes to the literature on social influence in entrepreneurship by examining the interaction between multiple sources of social influence and by using a randomized field experiment to overcome the endogenous process of tie formation.

 

Policy implications 
A short-term medium-intensity social interaction like having an entrepreneur mentor may be sufficient to influence young students to join a startup but not to found their own. Focusing only on founding decisions and not on decisions to join early-stage ventures when assessing interventions that aim to foster entrepreneurship might understate the contribution of these programmes to the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Reference 
Eesley, C., Wang, Y. (2017). 'Social influence over career choice: evidence from a randomized field experiment on entrepreneurial mentorship'. Research Policy.