Entrepreneurship for sustainable development has become an increasingly reseazched area because it has caught the attention of policy makers as a promising response to sustainable development challenges. However, given the emerging character of the field to date, most contributions remained conceptual or reported results of case study research.
The discussion should therefore benefit from the analysis of larger scale empirical data. This paper used survey data to answer the question of how the conceptual classifications of entrepreneurship for sustainable development fit such data. Analysing a sample of European firms with regard to what determines their classification into a specific conceptual category, the paper shows that various drivers for this exist and that some relationships are non-linear. In doing so, it contributes to a more refined and realistic understanding of patterns of entrepreneurship for sustainable development.