Perceptions of formal and informal financing sources as a predictor of female university students’ entrepreneurial intentions

This research aims to demonstrate how the female university students’ perceptions of the two main categories of financing—formal and informal—can influence their entrepreneurial intentions. Analyzing data collected through a custom-designed instrument grounded in existing literature via a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach, the study draws on a sample of 473 female university students from a public university in Mexico. The findings reveal that perceptions of the importance, accessibility, and convenience of formal financing sources—such as bank loans, government credit programs, and other institutional financial services—exert a stronger influence on entrepreneurial intentions than perceptions of informal financing sources—such as loans from family or friends, non-institutional angel investors, and informal lenders such as loan sharks.