Predicting the Effect of Intellectual Capital, Social Capital, and Resource Efficiency on Entrepreneurship Competiveness Evidenced from All Income Level Countries

Abstract

The aim of this explanatory study is to predict how social capital, intellectual capital, and resource efficiency would affect entrepreneurship competitiveness.  Five-year available data from two sources were used (2015-2019). Data for resource efficiency, social capital, and intellectual capital were obtained from the Global Sustainable Competitive Index, which has been organized by SolAbility Sustainable Intelligence. Data for entrepreneurial competitiveness were taken from the Global Entrepreneurship Index. 71 countries were ultimately chosen after the two data sources were aligned to identify those with data adequate for the study from both sources. Researchers further classified the targeted countries as Low-Middle income (37 countries) and High Income (34 countries) to check their performance differences. This means that low, lower-middle, and upper-middle are all included in one category because the performance gap among them is insignificant and are referred to as low-middle income for the sake of this study.  Inferential statistics model were used to analysis the data. Independent-t-test model was used to compare the performance of study variables between categorized countries. To explain the hypothesized influence of the predictors on entrepreneurship competitiveness, multiple linear regressions model (OLS) was used. Assumptions tests were checked before running the model. The finding of independent-t-test shows that there is statistically significant performance difference between the high income and low-middle income countries in terms of entrepreneurship competitiveness, social capital, and intellectual capital. Regression analysis result shows that the independent variables predict 58.6 % of the variance in the outcome variable.  From the three predictors, social capital and intellectual capital have their own statically significant influence on entrepreneurship competitiveness. Thus, working on these variables up to the standard application can bring incremental competitive capacity for entrepreneurship. The researchers believe that the study is of significant importance to policymakers, program developers, entrepreneurs, researchers since it provides useful insight on how the predictors influence entrepreneurship competitiveness.