Formulation of Factors Developing Social Entrepreneurial Intention of Students: (Grounded Theory Approach)

The present study aims to investigate and formulate factors that develop the social entrepreneurial intention of tourism students. To this end, semi-structured in-depth interviews with two groups of university professors and industry practitioners were applied in order to gather data. To analyze the data, a qualitative approach of Grounded Theory was taken into account. Following the Charmaz’s (2006) method, Constructionist version of grounded theory including Initial and Focused coding and also following the Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) framework, the categories of Causal conditions, Context condition, Main phenomenon, Intervening condition, and Consequences were applied so as to present a new paradigmatic model. According to the findings, applied and university education, perceived self-efficacy, cultural empathy, attitude towards social entrepreneurship, desirability, and feasibility are of the important causal factors for developing the social entrepreneurial intention of tourism students. Even though there are various intention models in the area of entrepreneurship literature, the variables introduced in the current study, cover their key variables holistically in a single model.