Paving the Way for Self-Employment: Does Society Matter?

Zulaicha Parastuty and Dieter Bögenhold
Additional contact information
Zulaicha Parastuty: Department of Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship, Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt 9020, Austria
Dieter Bögenhold: Department of Sociology, Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt 9020, Austria

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: This paper empirically investigates the extent to which institutional and individual factors predict the level of intention relating to self-employment. Arriving at a better understanding of intentions will assist to provide answers as to why ratios of self-employment are as they are and how public and economic policy may respond to an often perceived requirement to increase the level of self-employment. Using the dataset of 2017 Amway Global Entrepreneurship Research (AGER) for Austria, the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States, and Brazil this study finds that all variables predicting the intention to enter self-employment are significant at varying degree. The research explores the interplay between age, risk, gender, and education, on the one hand, and unemployment (OECD Labour Force Statistics) and political constitution as measured by the EFW index, on the other hand. Distinguishing between “no intention”, an “indifferent intention,” and a “strong intention” towards self-employment, the findings show that all variables can predict a willingness for self-employment in different, but significant, ways to comparable measures (an indifferent intention relative to no intention, and a strong intention to no intention). The paper concludes with an outlook to some more general perspectives of institutional economics and needs for further research.

Keywords: entrepreneurial intention; unemployment; self-employment; entrepreneurship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/3/747/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/3/747/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:3:p:747-:d:202366

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().