Relational Social Capital Dimension and Entrepreneurial Intentions in Online Environments

Entrepreneurial intention (El) is perceived as a key element for understanding the process of entrepreneurship because it is considered a prerequisite of the entrepreneurial action. Once the models that explain the development of this intention are established, the results add new variables that could help deepen the knowledge about this important element of our economies. Among these variables, social capital (SC) gains relevance as an influencer of entrepreneurship because transactions produced with this process depend on social interactions between individuals: their proper development will largely depend on the nature of these social relationships. Thus, our main goal is to explore the way in which relational SC dimension is integrated in the explanatory model of the development of the El. To analyze the relationship among the model constructs, we use Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) applying Partial Least Squares (PLS). Data is obtained from an online sample of 307 students. The results obtained from this sample show that the three main components of the relational SC dimension exert a different influence on the antecedents of Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) but indirectly influence El. The proposed structural model explains 75.8% of the variance of El and its capacity to predict El is 63.7%, which is considered highly predictable. One of our principal limitations is that our study is comprised only of students enrolled in online university. This paper contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship because it analyzes the impact of the main constructs of the TPB and the effect of relational SC dimension on the El of students enrolled in an online environment where lack of physical contact requires higher trust, norms of reciprocity and identification; three of the main components of the relational SC.