Theoretical deduction on influence factors of opportunity recognition in social entrepreneurship

Since 1980s, with the intensity of “government failure”, “market failure”, “voluntary failure”, and the growing social needs, social entrepreneurship as a new type of social activity has been on the rise gradually in the European countries and America, then forming a wave of social entrepreneurship all over the world. Generally speaking, social entrepreneurship is an activity of opportunity recognition, evaluation and development with the purpose of satisfying social needs and creating social values. Thus, as business entrepreneurship, opportunity recognition is the key step of entrepreneurial behavior in social entrepreneurship. So, this paper makes an analysis on opportunity recognition in the context of social entrepreneurship. First., the definition of opportunity recognition in social entrepreneurship has been elaborated. Then, based on existing research, four propositions are proposed on the relationships between entrepreneurial alertness, prior knowledge, previous experience, social networks and opportunity recognition.