Social Media Levels the Playing Field of Entrepreneurial Entry for Disadvantaged Populations

As an advanced information technology, social media has increasingly become a significant and prevalent source of information for both firms and people, and has reshaped entrepreneurial activities. Our article draws on the information processing perspective to build a model to explore the relationship between social media use and entrepreneurial entry and whether the relationship differs for disadvantaged populations in terms of gender, ethnicity, geographic divide (rural versus urban), and regional marketization. Using a nationally representative survey of 22 614 adults in the China Family Panel Studies, we test our model quantitatively with regression analysis. The results reveal that social media use can have a positive effect on individuals’ entrepreneurial entry and that the relationship between social media use and entrepreneurial entry is stronger for disadvantaged populations in terms of gender, rural versus urban divide, and regional marketization. Our identification of females, rural populations, and people in low marketization regions is among the first to distinguish the effect of social media on entrepreneurship for distinct populations. By highlighting the role of social media use in shaping entrepreneurial entry among disadvantaged populations, this study opens the black box of social media vis-à-vis entrepreneurial entry, and highlights that the role of social media use on entrepreneurial entry is stronger for disadvantaged populations, who have greater barriers to accessing entrepreneurship-related information in their offline environment.