The mindset of UK environmental entrepreneurs: A habitus perspective

Abstract

Environmental entrepreneurship has emerged as a significant sub-domain of entrepreneurship research. Drawing from Bourdieu’s work on the notion of habitus, we theorise on the emergence of UK environmental entrepreneurs. Based on evidence from a focus group and a series of in-depth interviews with twenty social and commercial environmental entrepreneurs, we provide insights on past experiences which culturally shaped the participants’ environmental and entrepreneurial dispositions. Specifically, we illustrate how education and the environmental movement in the form of role models, environmental literature and philosophy became influential elements of the interviewees’ cultural legacy. We also depict how parenthood and travel experiences, especially to places of significant environmental degradation, profoundly affected the formation of the environmental and entrepreneurial habitus of our interviewed environmental entrepreneurs. Contributing to the emerging theory of practice studies in entrepreneurship research, we provide a systematic habitus approach to the environmental entrepreneurial mindset.

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