Bridging rural constraints - do rural entrepreneurs exploit online social capital differently than urbanized entrepreneurs?

Abstract: Social capital can be a vital resource for entrepreneurs but so far research has not addressed how it is accessed through online communication channels. This paper presents a new way of sourcing network information about Swedish entrepreneurs and consequently explores whether rural entrepreneurs utilize online social capital as much as entrepreneurs from urban or metropolitan areas do. Theory implies rural entrepreneurs are constrained in working on the size and structure of their network (bridging) and also are less affine to use new social media sites, although social media facilitates enlarging the network size. Multivariate regressions with data from LinkedIn show that rural entrepreneurs use online bridging as much as their urbanized counterparts after all but are still limited by the size of their offline network. The results contribute to both the entrepreneurship as well as the social capital literature and the paper is one of the firsts that gives insights of the online network behaviour of entrepreneurs.