Intention to start a new venture among Greek self-employed and small business owners. The Moderating effect of Educational Background

摘要

Demographics in general and Education in particular, have been a point of disagreement among the students of entrepreneurship, in terms of the extent to which they actually help in predicting Entrepreneurial Intention and Action. The purpose of this study is to illuminate this issue, investigating the intention of Greek self-employed and small business owners to add new value and/or to expand their business and the impact of the Intention antecedents, as described in the theory of Planned Behavior, bringing into the equation also the impact of education. The sample of the study consists of 696 entrepreneurs from the Athens Metropolitan area. Structural Equation Modeling has been used in analyzing the data, as it appears to be the most appropriate tool in the relevant literature [1]. The results will highlight the effect of education on the entrepreneurial intention process. In addition, the relationship between the antecedents of intention and intention will become more lucid, through the retesting of the Theory of Planned Behavior in a rarely studied context, that of existing entrepreneurs, as opposed to aspiring ones, which is the study's major contribution. The study will conclude with proposing a number of implications for practitioners and academics.