The relationship between business incubators and social responsibility within Jordanian Universities

This research examines the role of business incubators in relation to social responsibility within Jordanian universities, addressing a gap in understanding how incubators contribute to both entrepreneurial development and societal outcomes. The study focuses on analyzing the association between key incubator dimensions — support services, environmental sustainability practices, community development outcomes, and operational and financial challenges — and social responsibility outcomes. A quantitative approach was adopted using a structured questionnaire administered to participants affiliated with university-based incubators. A total of 100 valid responses were collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation, and multiple regression analysis. Reliability was confirmed through Cronbach’s alpha. The overall regression model was statistically significant and explained a substantial proportion of variance in social responsibility (R 2 = 0.63). However, among the four dimensions, only environmental sustainability practices emerged as a statistically significant predictor of social responsibility (β = 0.48, p < .001); the association for support services was marginal (β = 0.19, p = .065), and community development (β = 0.24, p = .122) and operational challenges (β = −0.09, p = .389) were not statistically significant. These findings suggest that, while incubators’ overall profile of activity is meaningfully linked to social responsibility, environmental sustainability practices are the dimension most robustly associated with it in this sample. This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence from the Jordanian higher education context and offers practical insights for policymakers and incubator managers, particularly regarding the central role of environmental sustainability practices in shaping socially responsible outcomes. The authors suggest that incubators should prioritise strengthening environmental sustainability programming, while continuing to monitor how support services, community development, and operational challenges relate to social responsibility as further data become available.