Paper Title
Pro-Social Venturing: From Human and Sustainable Compassion to Anti-Consumption Behaviors
Abstract
This article extends knowledge by providing a theoretical model on the motivators and mechanisms through which pro-social ventures emerge. Specifically, it builds bridges between entrepreneurship and anti-consumption,two seemly opposite phenomena, to explain the creation of entrepreneurial models that reject the current status quo and are more pro-social. Using grounded theory, we examined SomEnergia,a renewable energy cooperative that emerged through a citizen participation process in 2010 in the region in Spain. We find that anti-consumers rather than simply boycotting and stop consuming, they acted together motivated by their shared desire of rejection towards a type of consumption that created both human and environmental suffering. We also found evidence of two different types of anti-consumption behaviors that led to translate human and environmental compassion into entrepreneurial action.