Population's entrepreneurial intentions: a theoretical aspect

The article demonstrates the role of entrepreneurship as a source of territories’ socio-economic development, job creation, and the implementation of public purposes. The authors indicate the necessity of studying the factors that contribute to the increase in the entrepreneurship scale and stimulate its intensity. The purpose of the work is to study population’s entrepreneurial intentions, its essence, and the factors that affect their formation and development. The paper reviews the evolution of approaches to understanding entrepreneurial intention as the basis of the enterprise: from the study of characteristic individual features, which distinguish entrepreneurs from people who are not engaged in entrepreneurial activity, to the account for the perception of the business environment. The authors summarize the approaches to the interpretation of population’s entrepreneurial intentions from the perspective of the forecast of entrepreneurial behavior, motivation and readiness to create a business, perception of norms and actions in accordance with the norms. The work proves that there should be a complex approach, taking into account individual characteristics and the environmental impact, and, thus, we should consider the social-cognitive theory. The authors present several groups of factors that influence entrepreneurial intentions, such as socio-demographic characteristics, educational level and population’s abilities, specialized education in the field of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial experience, including parents’ experience in entrepreneurship, job satisfaction, and regional specifics. Based on the foreign works’ analysis, we have found that the impact on entrepreneurial intentions of such factors as gender differences, the education availability in the field of entrepreneurship, and job satisfaction is ambiguous; there are no statistically significant links in some works. The practical significance of the research is to identify the factors that determine the presence, intensity, and nature of entrepreneurial intentions and which can be taken into account when creating an environment for their development and manifestation. At the next stage, the authors plan to consider the impact of entrepreneurial intentions on the population’s entrepreneurial activity, to show opportunities for strengthening positive effects.