Community enterprises—such as renewable energy cooperatives, Repair Cafés, and food forests—play an increasingly important role in sustainability transitions. These sustainability-focused community enterprises often face distinct challenges in scaling, as they aim to balance social and economic objectives while explicitly enhancing the well-being of their (often place-based) communities. We argue that one key factor influencing the emergence of such initiatives is the existing stock of social capital in local communities. In our research, we distinguish between bonding and bridging social capital. Bonding social capital refers to strong, inward-looking ties within a specific social group that offer emotional support and a sense of belonging. Bridging social capital involves outward-looking ties and is derived from ties across more disparate social groups. While bridging ties are generally emphasized as key for innovation and entrepreneurship, we argue that bonding social capital is more important for community entrepreneurship, as it enables the collective action on which these initiatives rely.

This presentation draws on a recently published article (Geskus et al., 2024) that examines how these different forms of social capital explain the varying prevalence of renewable energy cooperatives across Dutch municipalities. These findings are complemented by two ongoing studies on food forests and Repair Cafés. In all of these studies, we rely on detailed social media data (from the now defunct social media platform Hyves) to measure bonding and bridging social capital at the level of citizens’ social networks within and across municipalities, consistent with the social network perspective on social capital. Our results suggest that different types of sustainability community enterprises relate differently to bonding and bridging social capital, depending on the nature of their activities. Bonding social capital seems to play a particularly important role in the emergence of these sustainability community enterprises.

Geskus, S., Punt, M. B., Bauwens, T., Corten, R., & Frenken, K. (2024). Does social capital foster renewable energy cooperatives? Journal of Economic Geography, 24(6), 887–905.