This paper analyzes the role of the owning family’s socio-emotional goals in explaining the level of exports in family small and medium enterprises (SMEs), while investigating the influence of family business essence as an antecedent of socio-emotional goals. A survey studying 46 French family SMEs and a model using partial least squares structural equation modeling reveal that two out of the five hypothesized socio-emotional goals exert an influence on exports intensity (one being positive and the other negative), while family business essence positively and significantly impacts four of the socio-emotional goals pursued by family owners. A positive relationship between the power and experience components of the familiness construct (F-PEC Scale), then between experience and the family business essence is also evidenced. The study helps to integrate previous empirical results regarding family business internationalization by combining the constructs of familiness and socio-emotional goals (the five dimensions of the latter being evaluated simultaneously) to provide a better explanation of the level of exports in family SMEs. It also addresses the issue of family firm heterogeneity by evidencing the role of family SMEs’ ownership structure, experience, and culture in shaping the various socio-emotional goals pursued by family business owners.

本文分析了拥有家庭的社会情感目标在解释家庭中小型企业（SME）的出口水平中的作用，同时调查了家族企业本质作为社会情感目标的前提的影响。一项针对46家法国家族中小企业的调查以及使用偏最小二乘结构方程模型的模型显示，在五个假设的社会情感目标中，有两个对出口强度产生影响（一个为正，另一个为负），而家族企业的实质则为正并极大地影响了家庭主人追求的四个社会情感目标。家庭关系的力量和经验组成之间的正相关关系（F-PEC量表），然后是经验和家族企业本质之间的正相关关系。这项研究通过结合家族结构和社会情感目标（同时评估后者的五个维度）的结构，有助于整合有关家族企业国际化的先前经验结果，从而更好地解释了家庭中小企业的出口水平。它还通过证明家族中小企业的所有权结构，经验和文化在塑造家族企业所有者追求的各种社会情感目标中的作用，解决了家族企业异质性问题。