Analysis of the level of social entrepreneurship development: a bibliometric review

   Nowadays social entrepreneurship has become a main research area, showing an increasing interest in how entrepreneurial initiatives can address crucial social problems such as poverty, inequality, and environmental issues. Despite its growing importance, the field remains fragmented in terms of theoretical frameworks, interdisciplinary connections, and research collaborations. This study is aimed at analyzing the key areas and intellectual structure of scientific publications in the field of social entrepreneurship using bibliometric methods. The study uses bibliometric analysis and visualization methods of scientific data. The analysis is based on publications indexed in the Scopus and Web of Science databases for 2013-2023. VOSviewer tool has been used to visualize key thematic areas and the structure of scientific cooperation. In addition, regression analysis methods were used to identify factors affecting the citation of scientific papers in this field. The research result demonstrates the existence of separate thematic clusters, centered around key concepts, such as “social entrepreneurship”, “entrepreneurship”, “social impact”, “social responsibility”, and “sustainability”, while themes as “gender”, “bibliometric analysis”, and “network” are identified as promising research directions for further studies. The study also demonstrates that publications in journals with a high impact factor, collaboration with influential authors, and the availability of funding positively correlate with the level of citations. Future research may focus on the impact of digital technologies, public policy, and the institutional environment on the development of social entrepreneurship, as well as exploring strategies for scaling social enterprises without losing their mission.

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