Farmers’ Perception of Entrepreneurial Success: Evidence from the Greek Reality

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the perceptions of Greeks-farmers regarding success and to investigate the factors that are considered as indicators to explain, predict, and determine perceptional entrepreneurial success. This research focuses on existing agricultural enterprises as more than 400 randomly selected agricultural enterprises compose the survey’s sample. The main research method is through structured questionnaires. A series of multivariate analyses were conducted to examine the data. A stepwise procedure was used to identify the relevant variable and the significant ones were identified based on the ‘F’ test. The results of a discriminant analysis indicate that seven predictors (internal LOC, pull motivation, push motivation, internal funding, innovativeness, entrepreneurial capacity, and educational background) have a significant impact on the dependent variable “perceived entrepreneurial success”. Pull motivation is the most important variable to discriminate the groups. The value of this study lies in the fact that it is an original attempt to assess the parameters that could explain the perceived entrepreneurial success of agripreneurs; a focus that is lacking in previous studies.