Interactive Effects of Socioeconomic Conditions and Personal Attributes of Individuals on Microenterprise Establishment Decisions in the Mfantsiman Municipality of Ghana

Microenterprises have been recognised as a considerable employment avenue and constitute a major means of livelihood among poor households. In the Mfantsiman Municipality, the problem of unemployment persists despite the option for microenterprise establishment which is expected to have been enhanced under decentralised governance. This may be partly because, prevailing socioeconomic conditions may not be yielding the necessary motivation to establish enterprises among local dwellers who have varied personal attributes. To institute development interventions that effectively promote microenterprise establishment as a viable employment option, it is considered essential to evaluate the interactive effects of socio-economic conditions with personal attributes of individuals on their enterprise establishment decisions. This is because the interactive effects are expected to add onto or reduce the direct effects of the socioeconomic factors in the decisions made. The study which is quantitative in design, adopts a conjoint analytical approach based on data from a cross sectional survey of 800 economically active individuals in 20 rural communities in the Mfantsiman Municipality in 2013. The interactive effects of personal attributes with socio-economic factors were found to be significant but with varied influence on microenterprise establishment decisions. The study recommends that microenterprise development policies and programmes should be well targeted by age, sex and educational attainment, focusing on creating access to institutional support services and markets for activities with high returns on investment.