Finance, technology, and values: a configurational approach to the analysis of rural entrepreneurship

Abstract

The analysis of rural entrepreneurship (RE) at the local level requires further development. Its multidimensional nature demands theoretical and methodological approaches to navigate the complex and asymmetrical relationships that could exist between different conditioning factors. Analyses of specific contexts are also attractive for extracting more meaningful conclusions. This study takes the development of a specific type of religious tourism as reference context for the analysis of RE. Pilgrimage has shown a renewed capacity to mobilize people moved both by religious and secular motives in an interplay of values related to religion, nature, and culture. Some financial and technological factors are also relevant in this context. Integrating the Resource-Based View of firms and Resource Dependence Theory, and a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, different combinations of conditions representing values, finance, and technology are derived to explain high and low levels of entrepreneurship in two subsamples of rural municipalities. The results are relevant to preventing policymakers, researchers, and practitioners from making oversimplifying assumptions when analyzing RE. Investigating single factors in isolation lacks thoroughness, as relevant interdependencies exist between resources and agents that must be considered, which lead to diverse combinations of factors that can positively contribute to RE