Attitudes to sustainable entrepreneurship and environmental values of students: testing measurement scale and preliminary results of cross-country study

Abstract

Sustainable entrepreneurship (SE) is an approach that is crucial for creating enterprises that not only generate profit but also minimize environmental impact, promote social responsibility, drive innovations, and others. Furthermore, SE is one of the instruments to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The goal of this study is to investigate environmental values of students and evaluate their attitudes toward social entrepreneurship. 807 respondents from different countries (mostly from Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovenia) were surveyed using the authors’ developed questionnaire. The main blocks were tested for internal consistency. Data processing was performed by means of frequency analysis, Mann-Whitney U test and correlation analysis. The results indicate the readiness of the most of respondents to reduce use of plastics. In general, the respondents are also agreeing with the statement “People should change their buying habits and way of life to solve our environmental problems”. However, only half of respondents are ready to change their own buying habits. The level of entrepreneurial intentions among students is quite low. Only 26% of the respondents were ready to start sustainable business within 5 years of graduation, even less (24%) had a sustainable business idea. The research also revealed the fact that women have a larger interest in starting a business comparing than male respondents.