Antecedents of Entrepreneurial Intentions: A Comparative Study of Cultures

The study examines differences in entrepreneurial intentions and its antecedents across countries and cultures. This study uses Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour to compare the entrepreneurial intention of two diverse countries: Saudi Arabia and India. The study uses the non-parametric Mann Whitney U test and Structural Equation Modeling to analyze a sample of university students of the two countries. The study finds significant differences among the students of these two countries. The result indicates that entrepreneurial intention is higher in Indian students than their counterparts in Saudi Arabia. The result further indicates that attitude and perceived behavioral control explains entrepreneurial intention in both the countries. However, social norms are significant in explaining entrepreneurial intention only in India and not in Saudi Arabia. The findings of this study suggest that entrepreneurship has higher social approval in India when compared to Saudi Arabia. Social norms impact entrepreneurial intentions differently for India and Saudi Arabia. The study attributes the results to the differences in per capita income and socio-cultural norms in both countries. This study is one of the few that have explored cross-country entrepreneurial attributes as it addresses the research gap in terms of comparing entrepreneurial intentions of India and Saudi Arabia.