Students‘ entrepreneurial intentions: concept and main research approaches

The purpose of this study is to provide the analysis of main research on students’ entrepreneurial intentions, published in leading peer-reviewed academic journals on entrepreneurship and small business in 1991-2015. The study of entrepreneurial intentions plays an important role in explaining and predicting actual entrepreneurial behavior, and student life is a stage where attitudes towards entrepreneurship start to be formed. The review of publications identified three approaches to the analysis of students’ entrepreneurial intentions: entrepreneurial trait, behavioral and contextual approaches. The results have shown that during the development of entrepreneurial intentions concept, the research focus has been shifted from investigation of entrepreneurial personality and individual characteristics of entrepreneurs to the studies of entrepreneur’s behavior, and recently - to studies of contextual factors associated with entrepreneurial intentions. The analysis of economic, institutional and socio-cultural external environment, related to the formation of students’ entrepreneurial intentions, and conducting comparative and longitudinal studies are possible future research directions in this field. The study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by review and systematization of previous research on students’ entrepreneurial intentions, identification of main research approaches to their analysis and possible directions for further research. Besides this, the analysis also allowed to trace the development of entrepreneurial intentions concept in academic literature.