Antonio Baselice, Maurizio Prosperi (p), Mariarosaria Lombardi, Antonio Stasi, Antonio Lopolito

Aoibeann Walsh

Which socio-economic characteristics well predict the active participation of agents in social innovation initiatives? Using a dataset of 300 observations reporting information on the participants to social events organized by VaZapp - a rural hub aiming at creating career opportunities for young people in a marginalised area in Southern of Italy - we seek to define the characteristics of people, who are willing to adopt a social innovation, and to group them on the degree of active involvement in innovative cooperation activities. Data have been collected directly by a questionnaire.
All the attendances to these social events will be classified as followers or unresponsive actors, based on their willingness to follow the further social initiatives and activities. As a result, followers will be divided into active and moral, based on their involvement degree in these projects among different agents. Based on these definitions, we use the Heckman’s two-step framework for active involvement prediction.
Considering a sample of N observations, the two equations related to individual i are:
1) Wi1 = β01 + βjXi + Ui1 + ɛ1
2) Wi2 = β02 + βjXi + Ui2 + ɛ2
where Wi represents the dichotomous dependent variable, in which an attendance chooses whether to continue to follow VaZapp initiative and decide to follow it; Xi represents the list of socio-economic variables for each individual, Ui represents the perceived utility by the individual i, directly connected with the event in the first stage and with the social innovation in the second stage, and ɛ is the errors term. In the two-step estimation, the equation 2 exists only for those observations where Wi1 > 0, who are the attendances willing to follow the activities of VaZapp and share its vision. Both stages will be estimated by maximum likelihood as independent probit model to determine the individual decision participation to the social events and the active involvement in the social innovation. Finally, the probability to be an active follower, directly involved in some projects, cooperation or formal agreements, is measured as the joint probability to belong to the followers and to the active followers.
The expected result is to estimate the probability for each attendance to belong to the group of followers and to the group of active followers, starting from the socio-economics characteristics of the individuals. The results will represent useful information and suggestions for the social innovators and for the actors involved in VaZapp.

Aisling Moroney (p), James Kinsella, Brian Smyth

Maurizio Prosperi

See extended abstract

Jacopo Sforzi (p), Laura Antonella Colombo

Aisling Moroney

see extended abstract

Aoibeann Walsh (p)

Jacopo Sforzi

See extended abstract.