Investigating the Impact of Social Media on Entrepreneurship Development: Explaining the moderating role of Digital Technologies and Social Norms

Social media are considered as a Web 2.0 service, which has drawn the attention of the public and became global. Information flows, and the relationships between individuals in such platforms are realized and could become a prerequisite and a fertile ground for paying attention to entrepreneurial opportunities. It is expected to see dramatic growth in entrepreneurship development due to providing entrepreneurs with such opportunities. This paper aims to investigate the impact of social media platforms on entrepreneurship development, considering the moderating role of digital technologies and social norms. This research is applied in terms of aim, and also is considered as a descriptive-correlational research. The researcher-made questionnaire was used to gather the data, and a sample of 115 entrepreneurs who were in Tehran was surveyed using a non-random sampling technique. The gathered data was analyzed by Smart PLS software. As the Cronbach's alpha of all the constructs were more than 0.7, and the AVE value was more than 0.5, we ensured the research tool's reliability and validity. Findings revealed that improvement of social media platforms, social norms and digital technologies could positively affect entrepreneurship development on social media platforms. Besides, in addition to the direct impact, entrepreneurship on social media platforms was mostly affected indirectly, through social norms. Therefore, this research could be used to develop entrepreneurship on such platforms, by who use a certain level of digital technologies.