Ventures for the Public Good and Entrepreneurial Intentions: An Empirical Analysis of Sustainability Orientation as a Determining Factor

Entrepreneurship for sustainable development has become an increasingly researched area, as it is one promising response to sustainable development challenges. This paper contributes with a large-scale empirical analysis at the person level, specifically addressing the match between pursuing sustainable entrepreneurial opportunities and social and environmental concerns of the individuals behaving entrepreneurially. Despite this being a crucial precondition to actually address sustainability challenges by means entrepreneurship for sustainable development, the validity of this tenet has rarely been analysed empirically. Using large-scale survey data to analyse how sustainability orientation relates to entrepreneurial intention aimed at contributing sustainable development, this contribution helps to fill this research gap. Specifically, it shows that sustainability orientation has a positive effect on the pursuance of more sustainability-related entrepreneurial opportunities, but not on entrepreneurial intentions. The implications of these findings for environmental, social, entrepreneurship and sustainability policies are discussed.