Personality Traits and Social Entrepreneurship Intention (The Case of Food Business Owners in Ilam Province)

Personality traits are so influential in predicting entrepreneurial intentions as researchers believe that personality approach cannot be simply ignored and there are still hidden points in this field. Since social entrepreneurs have distinct personality traits rather than economic entrepreneurs, this study aimed to investigate the effect of personality traits on the intention of social entrepreneurship among food business owners in Ilam province. The statistical population consisted of 1208 food business owners in Ilam province that by using the table of Krejci and Morgan (1980) 415 of whom were selected by stratified random sampling with appropriate assignment. The data collection tool was a standard questionnaire whose validity and reliability were confirmed by subject experts and Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The results showed that among the five personality traits of extraversion, openness to experience, neuroticism, conscientiousness and agreeableness, only two traits including openness to experience (β= 0.431, t= 8.92) and conscientiousness (β= 0.102, t= 1.96) had a positive and significant effect on the intention of social entrepreneurship of food business owners of Ilam province. In this regard, managers and business owners should be able to employ employees based on the appropriateness of their personality traits to perform the assigned tasks, with full knowledge of the characteristics and personality traits of individuals.