The entrepreneurial activity of university students in Costa Rica: The role of the university ecosystem

The paper examines the role of specific properties of the university ecosystem on the entrepreneurial activity of university students in Costa Rica. We examined the influence of four predictors of entrepreneurial intention, specifically university environment, entrepreneurship education, learning program, and entrepreneurial reputation. The study tested four proposed hypotheses using hierarchical linear regression models on a sample of 4,158 Costa Rican university students drawn from the GUESSS 2018 database. The findings reveal that the skills, abilities, and values that students acquire on university courses, and a recognised entrepreneurial reputation acknowledged by students contribute positively to their entrepreneurial intention. Overall, this study provides further evidence that a university's environment, entrepreneurship education, learning program, and entrepreneurial reputation all contribute separately to entrepreneurial intention. However, the results differ considerably when taken in combination, whereupon it is a university's learning program and entrepreneurial reputation that contribute most positively to entrepreneurial intention.