Personality and social support as determinants of entrepreneurial intention. Gender differences in Italy

Abstract

The interest in the promotion of entrepreneurship is significantly increasing, particularly in those countries, such as Italy, that suffered during the recent great economic recession and subsequently needed to revitalize their economy. Entrepreneurial intention (EI) is a crucial stage in the entrepreneurial process and represents the basis for consequential entrepreneurial actions. Several research projects have sought to understand the antecedents of EI. This study, using a situational approach, has investigated the personal and contextual determinants of EI, exploring gender differences. In particular, the mediational role of general self-efficacy between internal locus of control (LoC), self-regulation, and support from family and friends, on the one hand, and EI, on the other hand, has been investigated. The study involved a sample of 658 Italian participants, of which 319 were male and 339 were female. Data were collected with a self-report on-line questionnaire and analysed with SPSS 23 and Mplus 7 to test a multi-group structural equation model. The results showed that self-efficacy totally mediated the relationship between internal LoC, self-regulation and EI. Moreover, it partially mediated the relationship between support from family and friends and EI. All the relations were significant for both men and women; however, our findings highlighted a stronger relationship between self-efficacy and EI for men, and between support from family and friends and both self-efficacy and EI for women. Findings highlighted the role of contextual characteristics in addition to personal ones in influencing EI and confirmed the key mediational function of self-efficacy. As for gender, results suggested that differences between men and women in relation to the entrepreneur role still exist. Practical implications for trainers and educators are discussed.

Entrepreneurial Business: Genetic Lottery or a Choice

“…No difference with respect to the internal locus of control was also proven by the Mueller (2004) study across the entire sample of seventeen countries. On contrary, Molino et al (2018) study on personality found higher levels of self efficacy and internal locus of control in males. Carland and Carland (1991) study investigated personality traits (preference for innovation, propensity for risk taking and need for achievement) among entrepreneurs and managers, and found no difference in personality traits between female and male entrepreneurs, that were stronger than in managers.…”

“…intentions, opportunity recognition, strategies, decision making, success). Molino et al (2018) have tested personality and social support as determinants of entrepreneurial intention in the Italian context and found that men scored higher levels of self-efficacy and internal locus of control than women. These findings are not in line with the present research, as it has not been found any statistically significant difference among women and men with respect to self-efficacy and externalization as opposite of internal locus of control.…”

Some Voices from Italian Youth on Well-Being: How to Cope with Job Insecurity?

“…The interventions aimed at enhancing employability are linked to issues of strengthening entrepreneurial intention, or paths to enhancing the achievement of objectives, and are attentive to gender differences and socio-economic origin (Molino et al 2018;Ojala et al 2019). Although these are useful, they should be balanced with important socio-political actions to effect employment and-with a massive education and training of the Italian leadership-aimed at affecting entrepreneurial and managerial cultures.…”

Development of a computerized adaptive test to assess entrepreneurial personality

“…In addition, there is no clarification of the type of entrepreneurs that may be found (Hsieh & Wu, 2019). Along these lines, there are other variables that may be considered such as entrepreneurial intent (Hu, Wang, Zhang, & Bin, 2018;Molino, Dolce, Cortese, & Ghislieri, 2018;Newman et al, 2019), dissatisfaction with the current job (Sousa, Araújo, Lua, & Gomes, 2019), and emotional regulation (Castellano, Muñoz-Navarro, Toledo, Spontón, & Medrano, 2019). It is well known that using self-reports leads to many limitations such as acquiescence bias and social desirability bias (Navarro-González, Lorenzo-Seva, & Vigil-Colet, 2016).…”