Institutional Support Makes Students Ready to Become Entrepreneurs, Saudi Study Finds

Entrepreneurship has become a central pillar of economic strategy in Saudi Arabia, where youth self-employment is increasingly viewed as a pathway to economic diversification and sustainable development. Yet a persistent question has troubled researchers and policymakers alike: what actually transforms a university student’s vague entrepreneurial aspiration into genuine preparedness for action? A new study published in Discover Sustainability offers a strikingly precise answer, suggesting that the psychological route from institutional support to entrepreneurial readiness runs through a preference for self-employment rather than through the perceived attractiveness of an entrepreneurial career.

The research, conducted by Salem Handhal Al Marri of the Applied College at King Faisal University in Hofuf, Alahsa, examines how perceived entrepreneurial support influences entrepreneurial readiness among university students in Saudi Arabia. The study was supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Faisal University and received approval from the university’s ethical committee, with informed consent obtained from all participants. Drawing on institutional theory, the work positions universities and policy frameworks not merely as background conditions but as active institutional forces that shape how students think about their professional futures.

Entrepreneurial readiness is a concept distinct from the entrepreneurial intention that has dominated prior scholarship. While intention captures whether someone wants to start a business, readiness describes whether that person is prepared to translate that desire into potential action. The distinction matters practically: a student may sincerely intend to become an entrepreneur yet lack the confidence, preparedness, and orientation needed to act on that intention. Existing research has focused predominantly on intention, leaving comparatively limited attention to the institutional and psychological mechanisms that shape readiness, a gap that is particularly evident in the Saudi context, where entrepreneurship has taken on heightened importance within the country’s economic transformation agenda.

To probe these mechanisms, the study surveyed 200 university students and applied Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling, a statistical technique widely used in management and entrepreneurship research to test relationships among latent constructs and to examine mediating pathways simultaneously. This methodological choice allowed the researcher to evaluate not only whether perceived entrepreneurial support strengthens readiness directly, but also whether two proposed psychological mediators, entrepreneurial career attractiveness and preference for self-employment, carry that influence forward.

The findings are nuanced. On the direct side, perceived entrepreneurial support proved powerful across the board: it strengthened entrepreneurial career attractiveness, strengthened preference for self-employment, and strengthened entrepreneurial readiness. In other words, when students perceive that their environment offers meaningful entrepreneurial support, through university programs, institutional backing, and policy signals, they report feeling more ready to pursue entrepreneurship, view entrepreneurial careers more favorably, and lean more strongly toward working for themselves.

But the mediated pathways revealed an important asymmetry. Preference for self-employment significantly contributed to entrepreneurial readiness and significantly mediated the relationship between perceived support and readiness. Entrepreneurial career attractiveness, by contrast, did not significantly predict readiness and did not provide a significant mediating pathway. Making entrepreneurship look attractive, in other words, is not enough to make students feel ready to pursue it. The translation of institutional support into psychological preparedness appears to depend on something deeper: whether students genuinely prefer self-employment as a mode of working, a preference that entails confidence in one’s own capacity and an orientation toward independence rather than conventional employment.

This asymmetry carries real theoretical weight. The study extends institutional theory by demonstrating that institutional support is translated into entrepreneurial readiness not simply by making entrepreneurship appear attractive, but more importantly by strengthening students’ preference for self-employment. Institutional signals, according to this account, do their deepest work when they reshape what students want for themselves, not merely how appealing a career option looks from the outside. That reframing challenges a common assumption in entrepreneurship education, where promotional campaigns often emphasize the glamour and opportunity of startup life without cultivating the underlying disposition toward self-directed work.

The practical implications follow directly from the findings. Policymakers and universities, the study suggests, should move beyond promoting entrepreneurship as an appealing career and place greater emphasis on institutional mechanisms that develop students’ confidence, preparedness, and orientation toward self-employment. Concretely, that points toward interventions that build self-efficacy, provide hands-on preparation for the realities of running a venture, and normalize self-employment as a legitimate and attainable professional identity. Such interventions, the research argues, can strengthen university-based entrepreneurial ecosystems, which in turn contribute to youth employment, economic diversification, and sustainable development in Saudi Arabia, all priorities embedded in the kingdom’s broader transformation agenda.

The study also sits at the intersection of several research streams, including career counseling, industrial psychology, entrepreneurial finance, and professional and vocational education, and it engages questions of self-efficacy that have long been central to entrepreneurship scholarship. By simultaneously examining entrepreneurial career attractiveness and preference for self-employment as potential pathways, it fills a specific empirical gap: limited prior research had treated these two constructs as parallel mediators, and the results show that doing so yields a more discriminating picture of how support actually operates. A construct that looks superficially similar to self-employment preference, the appeal of an entrepreneurial career, turns out to behave very differently in the statistical model.

For Saudi Arabia, where a young population and an ambitious diversification agenda converge, the findings arrive at a consequential moment. Universities are expanding entrepreneurship offerings, and government initiatives have elevated self-employment as a national priority. This research suggests that the effectiveness of those investments will hinge less on how entrepreneurship is marketed and more on how deeply institutional support reshapes students’ working preferences. If the goal is a generation of students who are genuinely ready to act on entrepreneurial aspirations, the study’s message is clear: build the preference first, and readiness will follow.

Subject of Research: How perceived entrepreneurial support enhances entrepreneurial readiness among Saudi university students through career attractiveness and self-employment preference

Article Title: The roles of perceived support, career attractiveness, and self-employment preference in enhancing entrepreneurial readiness

Article References: Al Marri, S. H. (2026). The roles of perceived support, career attractiveness, and self-employment preference in enhancing entrepreneurial readiness. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04660-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04660-1

Keywords: entrepreneurial readiness, perceived entrepreneurial support, self-employment preference, career attractiveness, Saudi Arabia, university students, institutional theory, PLS-SEM, entrepreneurship education, youth employment, economic diversification, King Faisal University