Dialect ability, cultural diversity and migrant entrepreneurship activity

Abstract

The impact of dialects on entrepreneurship is an emerging research field, but what is the role of urban cultural diversity in the impact of dialects on migrants’ entrepreneurship is still unclear. Using the Chinese Migrant Dynamics Monitoring Survey, this paper studies the impact of dialect ability on the entrepreneurship activity of migrants in China and the role of cultural diversity in this relationship. We find that improving dialect ability can increase the probability of migrants to start an undertaking. However, dialect ability cannot improve the quality of entrepreneurship, as mastering dialects makes migrants’ entrepreneurship activities mainly concentrated in low-end industries. Heterogeneity analysis finds that urban cultural diversity has a negative moderating effect on the influence of dialect ability on the migrants’ entrepreneurship. The effect of dialect ability on migrants’ entrepreneurship is more pronounced for migrants who live on the urban fringe, towns, rural areas and migrate across provinces. The impact of dialect ability on migrants’ entrepreneurship is more pronounced in the provinces with low entrepreneurial vitality where migrants come from and in the provinces with high entrepreneurial vitality where migrants move in. The mechanism analysis reveals that dialect ability promotes entrepreneurship by expanding social networks and promoting social integration.