Social and Commercial Entrepreneurial Intentions in Namibian and German University Students

Abstract

The present study investigates the role of culture in the formation of entrepreneurial intentions among university students in Germany and Namibia. It draws on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) in which intentions are regarded as resulting from the attitude toward the behaviour, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control. The TPB has been successfully applied to predict entrepreneurial intentions in many different cultures, predominantly within Western countries. In contrast, this study explores entrepreneurial intention in Sub-Saharan Africa and addresses the question of whether the predictors of entrepreneurial intention posited in the Theory of Planned Behaviour influence social and commercial intentions differentially depending on the cultural background. For that purpose, we sampled 179 Namibian and 1207 German university students. The Theory of Planned Behaviour explained considerably more variance of entrepreneurial intention in Germany than in Namibia, however, the results support a culture universal effect of perceived behavioural control on commercial entrepreneurial intention. Social entrepreneurial intention has been poorly explained by the Theory of Planned Behaviour in both countries.