Planned Behavior and Religious Beliefs as Antecedents to Entrepreneurial Intention: A Study With University Students

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the relationship between religious beliefs and the constructs of the Theory of Planned Behavior in entrepreneurial intention. Originality/value: The article stands out by promoting the understanding of entrepreneurship from the Theory of Planned Behavior proposed by Ajzen (1991), aligning it with religious beliefs. Design/methodology/approach: It is an exploratory and descriptive study, of a quantitative nature. The survey method was used to collect the data, in which a sample of 448 students from the Business Administration courses at two public universities in the northeast of Brazil was obtained. Structural Equation Modeling was used to treat and analyze the data. Findings: The results demonstrated that personal attitude, perceived control, and religious beliefs influence the entrepreneurial intention of university students, which did not occur with subjective norms. However, subjective norms influenced the personal attitude and perceived control of university students. The university students presented a predisposition to entrepreneurship and recognized that they have the necessary skills to create a business. However, the choice to become an entre preneur may not be motivated directly by the expectation of its social referents. Moreover, university students did not perceive the influence of religious beliefs in the manifestation of their behavior, because vocation and prosocial motivation are far from the environmental context in which university students are inserted or because they are not practicing a religion that fosters such beliefs.

Factors affecting students’ entrepreneurial intentions: a systematic review (2005–2022) for future directions in theory and practice

“…An Empirical Investigation Into The Mediating Role of Empathy (Mohammadi et al 2020 ) International Journal of Economics and Management Scopus Entrepreneurial intentions—theory and evidence from Asia, America, and Europe (Paul et al 2017 ) Journal of International Entrepreneurship Scopus Exploring entrepreneurial intentions in Latin American university students (Torres et al 2017 ) International Journal of Psychological Research Scopus The role of social and psychological factors on entrepreneurial intention among islamic college students in Indonesia (Ahamed and Rokhman 2015 ) Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review Scopus Research on the influencing factors of entrepreneurial intentions based on mediating effect of self-actualization (Dong et al 2019 ) International Journal of Innovation Science Scopus Do Entrepreneurship Students Have an Intention to Become an Entrepreneur? (Kurniawan et al 2019 ) Journal of entrepreneurship education Scopus Planned behavior and religious beliefs as antecedents to entrepreneurial intention: A study with university students [Comportamento planejado e crenças religiosas como antecedentes da intenção empreendedora: Um estudo com universitários] (Paiva et al 2020 ) Revista de Administracao Mackenzie Scopus Factors influencing the entrepreneurial intention of business graduate students of Saudi Arabia University (Gangwani and Ballout 2020 ) Academy of Entrepreneurship journal Scopus Determinants of students’ entrepreneurial intention to compete in a fast-pitch competition (Jang et al 2019 ) …”

What it is important to know about the effect of religious beliefs on entrepreneurial intention: The case of university students

“…Our results also suggest that Entrepreneurial Intention is directly influenced by Religious Beliefs ( β = 0.823, p < .001) and Social Influence ( β = 0.472, p < .001), demonstrating that personal beliefs and family influences are predominant in stimulating entrepreneurial behaviour (Razak et al, 2019), resulting from the religious influence in students' personal characteristics (Henley, 2017), in addition to their learning in the family context (Shapero & Sokol, 1982). Therefore, religion and family values such as ethics, honesty and trust are involved in students' entrepreneurial process (Paiva et al, 2020). In contrast, we found no indication that religious values are an important shaper, or element, of a local business culture (e.g., Audretsch et al, 2017).…”

“…Entrepreneurship is still an emerging theme, due to the various alternative ways to motivate the entrepreneurial intention (Paiva et al, 2018; Smith et al, 2019). However, from the extensive literature on entrepreneurship, little emphasis has been placed on the specific relationship between entrepreneurship and religion (King et al, 2008 but it is essential to include the construct of religion in those studies (Paiva et al, 2020). Therefore, previous research (e.g., Griebel et al, 2014; Parboteeah et al, 2015) has suggested that the use of this construct has begun to appear in the academic community, and so some authors have argued that religion is important for entrepreneurship, since it presents interactions with political, social and economic aspects (Hoogendoorn et al, 2016) and through its influence on the socio‐cultural environment (Riaz et al, 2016).…”

“…Religion is one of the main components of society and it is historically proven that most religions have a positive influence on entrepreneurship (Paiva et al, 2020; Riaz et al, 2016). This idea had already been advocated in previous research (Garba et al, 2013; Abdullahi & Suleiman, 2015), which advocated that religion is vital in determining the extent to which individuals take up entrepreneurship as a career or not; already Audretsch et al (2007) showed that religion influences entrepreneurial participation similarly to general Williamson et al (2007) who explained that religious influence on social and political events often tends to be long term, continuously affecting entrepreneurial activities in general.…”

“…Although the literature on entrepreneurial intention is vast, Hahn et al (2019) and Nowiński et al (2019) consider that the empirical evidence obtained is above all contradictory, and it is essential to include new variables in studies (Hsu et al, 2019), such as religious beliefs (e.g., Dana, 2009), social and/or family influences (e.g., Siregar & Marwan, 2020) and psychological and cognitive factors (personality traits) (e.g., Altinay et al, 2012). In this context, recent research has identified persistent gaps in studies on this topic, specifically, religious beliefs (Griebel et al, 2014;Paiva et al, 2020;Rietveld & Van Burg, 2014), the influence of family antecedents (Altinay et al, 2012;Danes et al, 2008;Dinis et al, 2013;Mosunmola Oluwafunmilayo et al, 2018) and psychological factors (Altinay et al, 2012;Contreras et al, 2017;Mujahid et al, 2020). Considering these emerging constructs, this study aims, empirically, through structural equation modelling, to determine the degree of influence of these three constructs on HEI students' entrepreneurial intention.…”