Youth Entrepreneurship in Germany: Empirical Evidence on the How, the Why, the How Many, the Who and the When

Abstract

Youth entrepreneurship is an increasingly prominent aspect of entrepreneurship support policies, but there is surprisingly little relevant research-based empirical evidence. This research gap is particularly noticeable when it comes to the personal and contextual factors that steer young people’s decision to start a business. Using statistically representative survey data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor for Germany, we apply logit regressions to determine the influence of 10 independent variables on the likelihood of starting a business. We distinguish between 18–24-year-olds and 25–64-year-olds as well as between founders and non-founders. Self-efficacy in entrepreneurial skills, fear of failure and gender are the strongest influencing variables for the person-related factors and knowledge of other founders for the contextual factors. For younger people, the formal level of education and the perception of local entrepreneurial opportunities do not play a role in the decision to start a business, whereas they are very important for older people. Our results suggest that start-up promotion policies should explicitly address the empirically proven factors of youth entrepreneurship instead of a ‘one size fits all’ policy for new businesses, regardless of the age of the founders.

The Difference of Influencing Factors of Entrepreneurs' Entrepreneurial Choice

“…In this regard, the study's findings are somewhat comparable to those of Wu Yanhua. An article published in 2023 by Rolf Sternberg and David Breitenbach researched the entrepreneurial conduct of young Germans and validated the connection between age and entrepreneurial selection [5]. They concluded that: Compared to older individuals, young adults exhibit a lower propensity to initiate a business venture due to an absence of sufficient social experience, prior failure, and financial resources.…”