Intersecting Multiple Factors on Women’s Informal Sustainable Businesses Performance

The informal sector is marked by small-scale businesses with limited capital, an unskilled workforce, a low level of education, a lack of social security and workforce protection, and low productivity due to limited capital, technology, and skills. Previous studies on the performance of women entrepreneurs remain limited because most focus on the formal sector or Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and emphasize direct relationships. In addition, the integration of the resource-based view (RBV) and sociological perspectives, as well as the role of moderators, remains understudied. This study aims to identify the factors that influence the sustainable performance of women’s informal businesses. The determinants include individual-level, resource-level, and socio-cultural factors. Additionally, the study aims to examine the moderate influence of entrepreneurial family background. Sustainability can be understood through the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) framework, which has three parts: economic, social, and environmental. A total of four-hundred women entrepreneurs from four regions in Malaysia were selected using a multi-stage sampling method. The final dataset of 386 responses was then analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in AMOS and inferential statistics. The results reveal that the direct effects of individual-level, resource-level, and socio-cultural factors are positive and significant for business performance. Next, the study found that an entrepreneurial family background moderates the relationships among resource-level and socio-cultural factors and sustainable business performance. However, moderation effects are not significant in the relationship between individual-level factors and sustainable business performance. As implications, the study recommends that these three multifaceted factors be emphasized by the government and agencies that train entrepreneurs.