Purpose: Building on construal level theory (CLT), this study explores mental representations of entrepreneurial intentions (EIs) with different foci (i.e. social and commercial) among university students from Generations Y and Z. Design/methodology/approach: Using a sample of university students from the United States contacted through the Entrepreneurship Education Project, this study employs a configurational perspective—fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA)—to identify the pathways leading to EIs and social entrepreneurial intentions (SEIs). Findings: Results show that the configurations of conditions leading to the outcomes (EI and SEI) are not disparate but share far more similarities even when considering socially oriented antecedents, supporting the claim that students perceive both EIs with different foci as high-level construals. The results also demonstrate no differences within gender, but there are asymmetries between gender in the configurations leading to EI and SEI. Research limitations/implications: This study contributes to EI literature by providing new insights into understanding how individuals perceive EIs at an early stage of entrepreneurship and by bringing CLT to the EI literature. Practical implications: These results have implications for entrepreneurship education and practice, as it recognizes that students' EIs are psychologically distant, lacking a level of detail and specificity. This would explain why students do not immediately create ventures, but that entrepreneurship has a certain incubation time to create an entrepreneurial mindset. Originality/value: Exploring the configurational approaches can help to uncover the complexity and idiosyncrasies underlying EIs.

Considering the speed at which new digital technologies are evolving, this paper aims to investigate the impact of digital transformation on multiple dimensions of literacy. An empirical research using antecedent factors of adoption is conducted to investigate the relationships between factors influencing digital immigrants' and digital natives' intentions to use digital technology. Using survey data on 177 digital immigrants and 183 digital natives, structural equation modelling (SEM) and a novel configurational thinking method-fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA)-are applied. The results, while showing some similarities, reveal that digital immigrants and digital natives utilize digital technologies differently and their intentions to use are influenced by different factors. For instance, for digital natives, information literacy has no significant effect on intention to use, while this path is significant for digital immigrants. Moreover, fsQCA results, while supporting the SEM findings, show that there are multiple configurations of conditions leading to the outcome of interest-intention to use digital technology.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to revisit the conceptualization and measurement of entrepreneurial intentions. Significant studies anchored in the Theory of Planned Behavior use causal statistical approaches to entrepreneurial intentions. This methodological approach, leads to the conclusion that there is a single pathway for all groups of people to achieve business start-up. Even though theory suggests approaches by women entrepreneurs to start a business may be influenced by different factors from those influencing men, results are inconclusive in these analyses. The authors argue that methodological preferences for linear, causal analytical approaches limit the understanding of gender similarities and differences in the business start-up process. The authors propose that when considering diverse samples, it is unreasonable to assume there is only a single pathway leading to business start-up. Design/methodology/approach: Building on fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) and data set of 2,038 respondents, the authors investigate factors predicting the intentions to start a business and evaluate the alternative conjunctive paths that emerge. Findings: The fsQCA results shows that the relationship among conditions leading to entrepreneurial intentions is complex and is best represented as multiple and conjectural causation configurations. In other words, there are multiple significant pathways (refers to equifinality) that predict intentions to start a business start-up, and there are significant differences by gender. Originality/value: This study is one of the first to examine the roll of gender as a sperate condition in the analysis. This paper offers implications for theory and future research and highlights the complexity of this domain.

Current research on social media focus on perceptions, behavioural intention, usage, and seldom take value systems into account. Values are expected to impact behaviour directly or indirectly via intervening constructs, for example, attitude. This paper explores, starting from the Theory of Trying, how value systems impact the digital natives’ interactive behaviour with social media. An empirical research is executed to test a model based on global and domain-specific values, and attitudes towards trying in explaining usage. Based on 116 valid responses from a sample of digital natives, several alternative models were tested. The proposed model based on the theory of trying shows that domain-specific values positively influence behaviour and usage of social media. Attitude towards trying positively mediates the effect of domain-specific values and global values on interactive behaviour with social media. Global values do not influence domain-specific values, nor has a direct impact on behaviour.