Exploring Chilean student perceptions of Opportunity entrepreneurship?

Karen Corbett-Lagos () and Vinicius Muraro ()
Additional contact information
Karen Corbett-Lagos: Institute for the Management and Innovation of Knowledge - INGENIO (CSIC-Universitat Politècnica de València), Postal: Spain
Vinicius Muraro: CIRCLE, Lund University

No 2025/2, Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research

Abstract: This study explores how Chilean university students perceive entrepreneurship, exploring whether they see it as an opportunity to address societal challenges or primarily as an enterprise creation. The research focuses on how these perceptions vary by gender in front of sociodemographic, academic, and institutional influential factors. Using a quantitative approach, we collected data from a sample of 973 students from different fields of study and conducted statistical analyses to determine the importance of factors that determine entrepreneurial attitudes. The results reveal that the majority of students see entrepreneurship as an opportunity to influence society and address social issues. Sociodemographic factors do not show statistical significance, suggesting that, within this specific population, they do not substantially alter the motivations for entrepreneurship. Although students may share similar views on the opportunity or business nature of entrepreneurship, the factors shaping this perception differ by gender. Among these factors, the value of active and engaged university support, especially in the form of experiential learning methodologies, in fostering opportunitydriven entrepreneurship is highlighted. In contrast, resources such as infrastructure and institutional culture, while important, appear to play a more limited role. This research underscores the need for a holistic approach to entrepreneurship education, but with special attention to particular differences between the segments being served, integrating institutional support with hands-on learning methods to better cultivate an entrepreneurial culture to economic growth and mindset geared towards addressing societal problems.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Higher education; Opportunity-driven entrepreneurship; Gender disparities; Chile (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2026-09-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent and nep-sbm
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.lub.lu.se/piis/article/view/27640/24089 Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2025_002

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research, Lund University, PO Box 117, SE-22100 Lund, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Torben Schubert ().