Born to Be Green: Antecedents of Green Entrepreneurship Intentions among Higher Education Students

Abstract

Green entrepreneurship has become a growing area of interest among researchers and practitioners as it has the potential to address the sustainability challenges faced by the global economy. The purpose of this study is to evaluate six antecedents (self-efficacy, attitude, green consumption commitment, country support, university support, and subjective norms) that can predict the intention to engage in green entrepreneurship among higher education students. A total of 690 higher education students were surveyed, and the results were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results showed that the internal antecedents of green entrepreneurship intention (self-efficacy, attitude, and green consumption commitment) have a higher significant predictive power than the external antecedents of green entrepreneurship intention (country support, university support, and subjective norms) among higher education students. The findings of this study provide valuable insights into the factors that influence green entrepreneurship intention (GEI) and can be used to inform policy and educational initiatives aimed at promoting green entrepreneurship. The findings of this research could also draw attention from the government and universities who are interested in understanding the factors that influence students’ inclination towards green entrepreneurship. This could lead to the creation of relevant course materials, programs, and funding to promote sustainable initiatives.

Intentions to Create Green Start-Ups for Collection of Unwanted Drugs: An Empirical Study

“…Conversely, if a student feels the desire to create a green start-up "but does not perceive high levels of self-efficacy, he or she will not intend to do so" [55] (p. 9). This result supports the results of several previous empirical works that perceived self-efficacy has a positive impact on green entrepreneurship intentions directly [23,34,55,67,74,77,89] and indirectly [56,79]. Self-efficacy is "termed as an enabling factor in recognizing the opportunity of an entrepreneurial startup" [80] (p. 2), and it is also "a central personality characteristic that contributes to the understanding of what drives the successful growth of start-ups" [82] (p. 1043).…”

“…Therefore, students who have positive attitudes toward green start-ups may be more willing to engage in the experience of creating a green start-up project, and they are also more eager to research and learn about how to create a start-up company. Previous evidence has also demonstrated that attitudes can be a contributing factor to engaging in green and sustainable entrepreneurship [19,21,24,45,67,[73][74][75]. The result of Sher et al [56] is consistent with the significant influence of attitudes on launching a sustainable start-up.…”

“…Zhang et al [47] found that attitude is the strongest determinant of waste classification intention. Empirical evidence supports that positive attitudes can exert a positive effect on individuals' intention to create green start-ups [35], sustainable start-ups [56], green entrepreneurship [1,24,67,74], sustainable entrepreneurship [18,45,[57][58][59]73,75], and the intention to engage in conventional entrepreneurship [51,52,66]. Furthermore, Aliedan et al [50] point out that attitudes influence the intention of students to be entrepreneurs.…”

“…Alvarez-Risco et al [34] concluded that support (i.e., "educational, conceptual, and country support") is an important predictor of students' green entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Previous research has provided empirical evidence that self-efficacy is positively associated with sustainable start-up intention [55,64], green entrepreneurial intention [23,34,67,74,77], green innova-tion [80,81], and start-up survival [82]. Also, Vuorio et al [18] suggest that self-efficacy has a positive effect on perceived entrepreneurial feasibility.…”

“…Students were chosen as a study population for several reasons, including (1) the large number of university students in Algeria (about 1.67 million in this year), as it is expected that a portion of them will initiate start-up projects; (2) the presence of business incubators in most universities to support and accompany students who wish to establish start-up projects; (3) most students in the selected scientific specializations have an acceptable background on how to start a new project; and (4) most previous investigations into intentions to create green start-ups or green entrepreneurship targeted university students as a sample (e.g., refs. [34,35,46,59,65,74,86,87]). For sampling, the authors used a convenience sample method, as in refs.…”