Start-ups and opportunity entrepreneurship in digital environment: GEM based

Entrepreneurship is a very complex process, and regardless of motivation, factors such as environment and perception play a significant role. In the digital era, digital technology creates specific circumstances that enable a new nature of entrepreneurship. As a result, digital era provides specific conditions for the creation of entrepreneurial ventures and changes to the context of entrepreneurship. The use of digital technologies opens up new opportunities for entrepreneurs to launch new business ventures and stimulate new entrepreneurial activities - start-ups. Consequently, high levels of social, economic, and technological development within an economy creates a business environment that provides greater opportunities for opportunity-driven entrepreneurship and start-up activities. The main goal in this paper is to identify the role of the digital business environment and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship to generate start-up activities. In this research area, 18 variables were grouped into three constructs to investigate the previously mentioned three research units. In the paper, three new variables were generated in the form of a regression factor result by grouping the previously mentioned individual variables. To verify the research hypothesis, multiple regression was used, in which all independent variables are simultaneously entered into the equation, which then evaluates the predictive power of each variable individually. The paper used a sample of 49 countries classified into three groups according to the methodology of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The GEM project was used for the purposes of quantitative procedures in this paper regarding the mentioned variable groups. As a result of the previously defined research model and functional dependencies between the variables, where Start-ups represent the function of Opportunity Entrepreneurship and Digital Environment, the basic research hypothesis is confirmed, in that there is a positive correlation between Start-ups as a dependent variable and Digital Environment and Opportunity Entrepreneurship as independent variables at the level of statistical significance. Finally, the study offers theoretical and practical implications for increasing intentions toward digital entrepreneurship and launching start-ups based on opportunities. Furthermore, findings contribute to the understanding of entrepreneurship in the digital environment. The limitation is reflected in the business environment as well as the degree to which the economy develops, which determine the availability of the digital environment, typical for countries with a high level of development.