Rural entrepreneurship and impact on economic and sociocultural development: Libertador Bolívar, Cadeate and San Pablo communes, Santa Elena canton, Ecuador

Abstract

The communes of Santa Elena, endure extreme poverty difficulties due to the scarcity of employment and reduced opportunities for economic insertion to ensure a better quality of life, and even more so in recent years, where a paradigm shift in pre-existing thinking was evident. entrepreneurship of the population. The objective of the research was to analyze rural entrepreneurship under the perspectives of economic and sociocultural development during the last 5 years in the three study communes. The research design was exploratory, oriented to the identification of economic and sociocultural factors; the population corresponded to 250 entrepreneurs selected through a convenience sampling, a scale questionnaire was applied. The results show that the economic development generated by the new ventures was slight due to the low qualification of the population and reduced access to working capital. In the social development, it improved the levels of labor occupation including women, while in the cultural aspect the community's perception to intervene in other undertakings is demonstrated. It is concluded that the new ventures, although reduced in size and with a low level of economic development, favor intangible improvements in the community.