Abstract
Business incubators (BI) are increasingly expected to nurture sustainability-driven start-ups and contribute to the economy's sustainable transformation. However, while previous (qualitative) research suggested a positive relationship between BI support services and sustainable impacts by entrepreneurs, no study has explored this link statistically, leaving sustainability-driven business incubation (SBI) haphazard and strategically ill-informed. Given the absence of a comprehensible assessment approach, this paper develops a coherent theoretical framework for structuring SBI. Moreover, it quantitatively investigates the relationship between entrepreneurs' usage of various BI support services and their self-proclaimed contributions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Building on a sample of 299 German university spin-off start-ups, we provide empirical evidence that BI support services are generally related to the sustainable impacts of entrepreneurs. However, at a more nuanced level, we show that economic and ecological SDGs are associated with only a few BI services. In contrast, social SDGs are attained by a broad support service portfolio. In conclusion, we advise policymakers and BI managers to recognize the diverse support needs of sustainable entrepreneurs and tailor BI programs towards specific sustainability challenges rather than generalized approaches.
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