The student entrepreneurial intention cloud: a review of reviews

Despite the wealth of literature on factors influencing student entrepreneurial intentions (SEIs), as well as several review articles having provided an overview, the complexity of their interrelationships remains inadequately understood. Furthermore, the scattered use and adoption of theories by review articles to present their findings makes it even more difficult to create a comparative overview and could prevent integration. In this article, we address this and conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) of 23 review articles. As such, we provide an overview of the factors influencing SEI and outline how they are interrelated, unravelling much-needed research avenues in this study domain. The study reveals that the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and entrepreneurial event theory (EET) is predominant in SEI research. It identifies 63 factors affecting SEI, categorised into seven groups, with notable interrelations within and across them. Based on the gaps and trends identified in this review of reviews, future recommendations are put forward for researchers and entrepreneurship policymakers to ensure the effective development of an entrepreneurial environment to cultivate SEI.