Green Entrepreneurship: Knowledge and Perception of Students and Professionals from Poland and Slovakia

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review the understanding of the term “green entrepreneurship” in contemporary management sciences and its interpretation by people who are or soon will be professionally active. Investigating the phenomenon from a historical perspective will allow an evolutionary approach to the category to indicate contemporary challenges. Apart from a review of the literature on the subject, the interpretations of the term by the target group are recognized in the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) context. The research methods used in the article include a critical analysis of the literature on the subject and field research presented in the empirical part. Primary research was carried out in two countries: Poland and Slovakia, among students and professionals working, as well as those professionally active in the private and public sectors. The study aimed to generally identify the knowledge of the concept of “green entrepreneurship”. Based on the results, the responses were delimited and those indicated by less than 5% of the respondents were considered irrelevant. Based on the remaining answers, a new survey questionnaire was created, which was used to conduct the second stage of the research. To simplify the research tool, it was assumed that the questions would be binary (“yes” or “no” answers), and the resulting survey would consist of 22 phrases (marked with alphanumeric symbols) and a form. The respondents’ answers from the second stage of the study allowed us to identify characteristic groups of variables with which the respondents associated the term “green entrepreneurship” and the groups of respondents who indicated an understanding of green entrepreneurship in a specific aspect. It also allowed for the identification the determinants of these indications, as well as similarities and differences between Poles and Slovaks in this respect. For this purpose, the classification and regression tree method (C&RT) was used. For the purposes of this study, JASP 0.18.1 software was used to create the tree. The results show that perceptions and knowledge of green entrepreneurship differ in both surveyed countries.