Students’ Sustainable Entrepreneurship Intentions: The Role of Sustainable Values and Culture

Abstract

Sustainable values have been enforced in societies, given individuals’ awareness of the societal challenges faced by current and future generations. Building upon the theory of planned behaviour and the value literature, this article examines whether and how sustainable values, specifically pro-environmental and solidarity values, influence sustainable entrepreneurial intentions in two different cultural contexts: Ecuador and Germany. About 297 university students were recruited to test the hypotheses. The findings reveal cultural differences in how sustainable values are associated with the behavioural mechanism that leads to sustainable entrepreneurial intentions. Surprisingly, pro-environmental values are not related to the behavioural mechanism that leads to sustainable entrepreneurial intentions in either Germany or Ecuador, whereas the solidarity values—sustainable entrepreneurial intentions relationship is fully mediated by behavioural mechanisms in Ecuador, and in Germany, the attitude towards sustainable entrepreneurship and perceived behavioural control towards sustainability partially mediate this relationship. These findings demonstrate the importance of contextualising entrepreneurial intentions in the context of sustainable entrepreneurship.