“Entrepreneurship” from the lens of enlightenment: Impacts of religiosity and spiritual intelligence on social entrepreneurial intentions

Despite an escalated gravity of interest in exploring factors that shape university students’ social entrepreneurial intentions, there are significant gaps in our understanding of this phenomenon. The current study examines the boundary effects of religiosity and spiritual intelligence to predict university students’ social entrepreneurial intentions. The authors collected the data from university students in their final years in multiple waves and employed SmartPLS (v 4.0) for data analysis. Our findings indicate that religiosity can affect social entrepreneurial intentions through two paths: intrinsic motivation mediates the association between intrinsic religiosity and social entrepreneurial intentions, and extrinsic motivation mediates the relationship between extrinsic religiosity and social entrepreneurial intentions. Further, spiritual intelligence moderates the relationship between intrinsic religiosity and social entrepreneurial intentions, mediated by intrinsic motivation such that at high levels of spiritual intelligence the association is more potent and vice versa. This is the first study that examines the boundary conditions of social entrepreneurial intentions of university students by employing the lens of religiosity and spirituality. The paper presents substantial theoretical and practical implications.