Entrepreneurial intention among high-school students: the importance of parents, peers and neighbors

Literature on the formation of intention toward entrepreneurship in adolescents has focused on either parental (vertical) transmission of social capital or network effects from peers or neighbours (horizontal). Considering the simultaneous effect of parents, peers, and neighbours, we suggest that such three levels identify a mechanism whereby the individual perception of their importance interacts with their objective characteristics. With a unique dataset for second-year high-school adolescents in the Italian city of Palermo, and employing Logit and 3SLS methods, we find evidence for a strong parental effect and for secondary peer (peers) effects on student intention. We also detect clear endogenous effects from the neighbourhood and the overall context. Moreover, entrepreneurship is confirmed to be perceived, even by high-school students, as a buffer for possible unemployment and social mobility.