A Factual Analysis of the Causal Effect of Sociocultural and Political Factors on Entrepreneurial Intention: Insights from Nigeria

Abstract

The paper presents a factual analysis of the sociocultural and political determinants of entrepreneurial intention with insights from Nigerian society to provide an understanding of their manifestations and causal effect on entrepreneurial intention. The objective is to validate the provisional understanding of the effect of sociocultural and political factors on entrepreneurial intention provided in the literature. In consonance with the objective  a systematic review of the literature was carried out to search for pertinent factors using web based search engines, and several scholarly articles were isolated and examined. Topic search was used to identify articles on sociocultural factors in connection with entrepreneurial intention using their titles, abstracts, and keywords. It attempted, through an extensive literature review, to provide an integrated view for a more comprehensive understanding of sociocultural factors and entrepreneurial intention; and the key sociocultural factors that lead members of society to become entrepreneurs. For robustness, an extensive search for relevant literature was undertaken through a continuous filtering process and 134 articles dealing with sociocultural and/or political determinants of entrepreneurial intention were obtained. The factual analysis of the Nigerian context provided evidence that confirm the theoretical postulations in the articles reviewed. Evidently, all the sociocultural factors and political factors have some direct or indirect influence on entrepreneurial intentions in Nigeria. However, some of them only have modest influence. The strongest and most direct factual evidence was shown in unemployment, work experience, family values and ethnic values, while the weakest and most indirect influence was shown as religious values, social recognition and status, and social security. The effects of peer influence, social network, and job displacement are considered to be relatively weak. Essentially, however, the Nigerian experience and cases argued in this paper provides clarity to the hitherto provisional understanding of how entrepreneurial intention is affected and influenced by the sociocultural experience of a people.