Engineers and Social Responsibility: Influence of Social Work Experience, Hope and Empathic Concern on Social Entrepreneurship Intentions among Graduate Students

The synergy of technology-based innovative solutions and Social Entrepreneurship carries an immense potential to provide solutions for numerous environmental, social, and economic issues faced by an emerging economy like India. For an engineering professional, a commitment to society is regarded as integral and can be thought of as being impelled by involvement in various social causes. Therefore, this study seeks to analyze the influence of the Social Work Experience of engineering students on Empathic Concern and the newly identified construct, Hope. Additionally, the effect of Empathic Concern and Hope on Social Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy and Social Entrepreneurship Intention (SEI) is examined. Through a questionnaire survey of undergraduate students from 49 engineering and technical institutions across the country, 243 responses were collected. The research employed the Partial Least Squares Approach to Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) to test the proposed hypotheses. This study found that students’ involvement and experience in social activities significantly influenced both Empathic Concern and Hope. Empathic Concern and Hope, the newly introduced antecedent, significantly influenced Social Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy. In line with the previous studies, self-efficacy positively and significantly influenced SEI. The establishment of Hope as an antecedent to study SEI is particularly novel and contributes to future Social Entrepreneurship research. The findings contribute to the body of knowledge on SEI of engineering students in an emerging nation where studies are particularly scarce, and techno-Social Entrepreneurship may be the ray of hope to address social, environmental, and economic concerns.