Internal drivers of ecopreneurship among food and beverage Industries in Tanzania

Abstract

The concept of ecopreneurship is evolving due to necessity to address the sustainability challenges particularly on the environment grounded on industrial pollutions. Thus, several researches have been committed to address sustainability challenges through investigating mechanism for enhancing ecopreneurship implementation in different context of nations. In this path, this study focused to examine the influence of internal drivers on the implementation of ecopreneurship headed for addressing sustainability challenges. This is empirical study incorporated (102) small scale ecopreneurs operating in the Tanzania food and beverage industries. The study was directed to test five hypotheses of internal drivers namely; finance knowledge, internal stakeholders, motivation and researches on influencing ecopreneurship implementation. The results of the study found that, four among the five tested drivers had significant and positive influence on ecopreneurship implementation; the significant drivers consist of finance, knowledge, internal stakeholders and researches. Thus, ecopreneurship implementation can be enhanced through financing ecopreneurship activities, increasing employee knowledge on environment, upholding stakeholders concern on sustainable industrial practices and researching information regarding environmental friendly products, along with eco-technology. Conversely, motivation had insignificant influence on ecopreneurship implementation. Therefore, the study recommends on initiatives to enhance ecopreneurship implementation through significant drivers and so addresses the sustainability challenges sourced from unsustainable industrial practices.