Fostering Entrepreneurship among Finnish Business Students: Antecedents of Entrepreneurial Intent and Implications for Entrepreneurship Education

Abstract

In Finland, the institutional environment is highly conducive to engaging in entrepreneurship, the costs and complexities of starting a business are low, and Finnish Universities play a significant role in educating future entrepreneurs. Nonetheless, the rate of new venture creation, and the innovativeness of new ventures in Finland remains among the lowest in the developed world. Moreover, only a small fraction of the adult population expresses intention to start and/or grow a business. This paper examines what drives Finnish students to want to become entrepreneurs. We examined four possible antecedents of Finnish business students' intent to engage in three different types of entrepreneurship: general, high growth, and "lifestyle" entrepreneurship. We found that four antecedents, namely, entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurship experience, proactive personality, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy predicted the three types of entrepreneurial intent, and the strongest relationship was found between the antecedents and high growth entrepreneurial intent. Additionally, we found that entrepreneurial self-efficacy mediated the relationship between entrepreneurship education, educational experience and proactive personality and the three types of entrepreneurial intent. Implications for entrepreneurship education in Finland and future research are discussed.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial intent, entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurship experience, proactive personality, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, Finnish entrepreneurs, Finland