The Impact of Cultural Attitudes Toward Environmental Issues on the Green Entrepreneurship Entry Level: A Comparative Study of Three European Countries

Recently, the topic of green entrepreneurship, even green nascent entrepreneurship, has been gathering momentum and emerging as a reality, which may play a major role in the development of a more sustainable global economy. This article focuses exclusively on the so-called green-green companies, therefore on companies that were conceived with an ecological approach since their beginnings. Numerous studies lend support to the argument that social norms, which certainly are a manifestation of the given cultural context, are among the most significant determinants of entrepreneurial activity. The objective of this study is to explore how the cultural factors, which influence the attitude toward environment, may or may not affect the ratio of green entrepreneurship initiatives in a region. Consequently, we try to answer as well the question if there are cultures more likely to start green enterprise ventures than others do. Apart from exposing the recent efforts to find the connection between environmental attitudes and green entrepreneurship commitment, this papers offers data collected in Spain, Portugal and Austria regarding four variables: environment legislation, non-governmental initiatives to preserve the environment, ratio of sustainable cities and measures undertaken in environmental and ecopreneurship education. These variables evidence the embedded environmental awareness in the three different cultural areas. The methodological approach consists of an exploratory data analysis in order to unveil the kind of relation between the above-mentioned variables and the green entrepreneurship initiatives in these regions. The results do not show a clearly positive relation between a friendly culture toward environmental aspects and the rate of green entrepreneurial initiatives and further research much be done to investigate if there is however a cause–effect influence but in a longer time spam. The authors still believe on the important part played by culture not only in the level of business venture creation, but also in the type of venture initiatives.