Exploring the Factors That Encourage and Discourage Young People to Start a Business, Based on a Survey of Young Entrepreneurs

Abstract

In this paper, I present the results of a research based on a questionnaire survey of young people aged 40 and under, with a business at the time of the research. Although a completely random sampling was not possible due to the characteristics of the population, it was possible to reach about 10% of the population through multichannel communication. 1% of the young entrepreneurs reached completed the questionnaire voluntarily. The 243 respondents were highly heterogeneous by area, age, gender and education. In many respects, the survey yielded similar results to previous surveys among young people as a whole, for example in terms of the broadly important motivational force of independence and financial advantages, but family background showed a strong variance. Understandably, the latter was important for those from entrepreneurial families, but the sample characteristics showed that many young people from non-entrepreneurial families also start a business. In the field of youth entrepreneurship development, it is probably worthwhile to treat this group separately, as they may have a higher knowledge and emotional threshold to start their own business.