Comparative Analysis of Students’ Entrepreneurial Intentions in Latvia and Other CEE Countries

Abstract

This study aims to analyse the entrepreneurial intentions of students comparing Latvia and other Central and Eastern European countries. The investigation examines the impact of factors of micro and macro level as well as entrepreneurial education. The paper contains both qualitative and quantitative analysis including inferential and descriptive statistics to analyse the deviations inside the sample of 680 respondents from Latvia and other Eastern European countries. The results reveal several statistically significant differences between students from Latvia and other countries. Latvians emphasize seeking independence as a highly important motivational factor while valuing lower formal education, business training and business experience as the factors contributing to the success in entrepreneurship. Students from Latvia consider the regulatory framework for doing business to be a bigger obstacle to doing business than in other Central and Eastern European countries. This paper contributes to previous studies on entrepreneurial intentions in different geographical areas of Central and Eastern European countries where this type of research is lacking. Through identification of factors that impact entrepreneurial education, micro and macro factors influencing career decisions and intentions of young people it will be possible to improve systems of education and government policies to increase the efficiency of entrepreneurial education and to encourage entrepreneurship as a career choice.