Determination of students’ characteristics and perspectives about social entrepreneurship: A case of Anadolu University

Social entrepreneurship enables stakeholders to take innovative and inclusive approaches to social, environmental, and economic problems and to produce solutions to eliminate social injustice. It is not only self-sufficient by providing an economic return, but also offers people the opportunity for a more sustainable common world. Considering that, training of tourism faculty students to develop both entrepreneurial and social entrepreneur characteristics will bring the tourism industry to the forefront and lead to the increase of social, sectoral, and public benefits. Thus, the aim of this study is to examine the social entrepreneurship characteristics and perspectives of students taking tourism higher education. In the study, the Social Entrepreneurship Scale developed by Konaklı and Göğüş (2013), and the questionnaire form was applied to 203 students from Anadolu University, Faculty of Tourism in January 2020. According to the results of the study, there is a statistically significant difference between the grade factor and the self-confidence dimension. Accordingly, the relationship between the self-confidence dimension of the first graders and the second graders is significant and this relation is in favor of the first graders. Also, there are moderate and positive correlations between risk-taking and self-confidence, risk-taking and personal creativity, and self-confidence and personal creativity dimensions. In addition to these, the most common words that come to students\u27 minds about entrepreneurship are listed as “risk, money-capital, business, self-confidence, idea”. On the other hand, the words related to social entrepreneurship are listed as “society, communication, social media, self-confidence, humanity.