The effect of social capital on the development of the social identity of agritourist entrepreneur: A qualitative approach

There is a lack of research in the progress and evaluation of social capital in the field of agritourism and its effect on the development of the social identity of the entrepreneur. To explore this problem, this article aims to understand the development of agritourism businesses by focusing on the role of social capital and the social identity of an entrepreneur. To achieve this objective and based on a review of the relevant literature on the two concepts, an exploratory qualitative study is carried out on a sample of 10 agritourism entrepreneurs who were farmers, or who started businesses in this field. To do this, a large amount of documentation was examined, and semi-structured interviews were conducted and analyzed. The results revealed that social capital helps strengthen the social identity of entrepreneurs when launching their business. According to this observation, a conceptual model has been proposed to test this relationship in the future.