Personal values as predictors of entrepreneurial intentions of university students

Abstract

Considering entrepreneurship as a set of actions performed by a subject, and behavior one of the main predictors of actions, this work presents a study based on the Theory of Human Values, that aims to analyze the influence of personal values on entrepreneurial intention of university students; understanding as well the personal values as cognitive characteristics that explain the attitudes of a subject towards entrepreneurship, the hypotheses of this work establish a positive relation between values associated to individualism and the entrepreneurial intention as well as a negative relation between values associated to collectivism and the entrepreneurial intention of university students. For this, a sample of 488 undergraduate students from the University of Guadalajara in Mexico is used and statistical analysis is performed through the SPSS software. Using a quantitative methodology, an exploratory factorial analysis and a linear regression model are performed to calculate the predictive capacity of the different types of personal values on the entrepreneurial intention of students at the University previously mentioned. Personal values associated to individualism prove to be highly related to entrepreneurial intentions while those related to collectivism show low or null effect. Some exceptions are discussed and lead to future lines of research regarding different types of entrepreneurship.