When May Age Not Be A Barrier To Entrepreneurial Entry of Senior People In Rural Areas In The Context of Emerging Economies?

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Keywords: Entrepreneurship entry, Rural entrepreneur, Senior entrepreneur, Village democratic governance, Individual geographical mobility

Abstract: This paper aims to contribute to senior entrepreneurship and rural entrepreneurship literature by developing a contingency view regarding the likelihood of entrepreneurship entry by senior people in rural areas in emerging economies. Based on utility theory, we propose that multi-level factors and their joint effects help overcome the barriers to entrepreneurial entry by older individuals. Our results, based on the Chinese Labour-force Dynamics Surveys (CLDS) data comprising 8,692 individual-year observations in 209 villages in 2012, 2014 and 2016, indicate that individual geographical mobility attenuates the negative effect of older age on entrepreneurship entry in rural areas. While village democratic governance does not independently have a mitigating effect, its interaction with individual geographical mobility weakens the negative impact of older age on entrepreneurship entry. Our research has theoretical and policy significance for understanding entrepreneurial entry of senior people in rural areas in addressing the challenges of ageing society.