An Analysis on the Effect of Social Capital on Opportunities Recognition in Agricultural Entrepreneurship Development

As Timmons believes, entrepreneurship leads to creation of promotion and reconstruction for owners and opportunity is the heart of entrepreneurship. But, opportunity is expressed in relation to other effective components on entrepreneurship such as social capital or social energy. This capital is composed of informal values and play a significant role in recognizing opportunities by generating trust, common norms and bonds among individuals. Accordingly, the present paper aims at analyzing the effect of social capital on opportunities recognition in agricultural entrepreneurship development. Research population is composed of agricultural entrepreneurs of Kermanshah city (N=82) form which 58 individuals were selected as the sample based on Morgan’s Table and using random sampling. The research is performed through descriptive – correlation methodology and required data were gathered by a questionnaire validity and reliability of which were evaluated using panel of experts and Cronbach’s Alpha, respectively. Validation and determining data adaption and fitness were performed using structural equation modeling in AMOS software and the effect of social capital on opportunities recognition was examined by MANOVA method (between two groups having and lacking social capital) in SPSS. According to findings, research hypotheses on presence of a significant relationship between social capital and aspects of opportunity recognition (number and diversity of opportunities) in agricultural entrepreneurship and a significant relationship between diversity and number of opportunities in agricultural entrepreneurship were confirmed.