Gender, Perceived Insecurity, Corruption Perception, Subjective Norm, and Household Income: A Configurational Approach to Entrepreneurial Intention

The entrepreneurial intention is of great importance as an immediate antecedent of entrepreneurship, understood as a key to explain future regional economic development in emerging countries. There is a growing interest from academia about the entrepreneurial intention of university students from emerging countries. This study addresses, in an exploratory way, the combined effect of three internal variables affected by the environment (perceived insecurity, corruption perception, and subjective norm) and two sociodemographic variables (household income and gender) and their impact on the entrepreneurial intention of university students. A sample of students (N = 380; male = 185; female = 195) from the Technological University of the State of Zacatecas (Mexico) is used and a causal model is proposed following the fsQCA configurational methodology. This study highlights the gender gap that affects women even in the stage that precedes the act of entrepreneurship as well as the importance of having financial resources. Also, the results show how citizen security facilitates the development of entrepreneurial intention and the need of improving the formal procedures surrounding entrepreneurship to reduce the facilitating effect of corruption. Finally, the findings support the important role of subjective norm. From a cognitive point of view, a configurational approach is addressed to explain the effect on entrepreneurial intention of phenomena that are strongly prevalent in the Latin America and the Caribbean region, such as gender inequality, citizen insecurity, corruption, and poverty.