The Impact of Perceived Support and Barriers on the Sustainable Orientation of Turkish Startups

Abstract

Sustainable entrepreneurship is a critical component of the solutions to the global challenges of our time. Yet to stimulate sustainable entrepreneurship orientation (SEO), creating supportive environmental conditions is key. While the impact of various external conditions on entrepreneurship orientation is highly studied, the impact of such factors on sustainable orientation of startup founders is not yet well-researched, particularly outside of the western hemisphere. This quantitative study sheds light on the impact of perceived support and barriers on SEO in Turkey, drawing on the theory of planned behavior, extending entrepreneurship literature, and providing novel insights to practitioners. Findings of linear regression analysis reveal that perceived support has a significant and positive impact on SEO, while barriers are found to not have an effect. Those results may indicate that founders are able to circumvent perceived barriers when enough support is received, promoting their ability to behave sustainably despite contextual challenges. Young founder age is also found to positively and significantly influence sustainable orientation. Implications of those results are discussed with researchers and practitioners in mind.

1. Introduction

Sustainability-driven entrepreneurial activities, which combine social and environmental benefits with financial gain, are seen as a promising approach to coping with growing societal inequality and environmental hazards [1,2,3,4,5,6]. However, the population of entrepreneurs with sustainable orientation appears to vary amongst different contexts [7]. Existing research shows that people’s attitudes towards sustainability and entrepreneurialism are affected by political, economic, and societal environments; for example: rules and regulations, the quality of government, the availability of quality education, funding opportunities, the presence of support programs, and national culture [8,9,10]. An appropriate environment could hence encourage sustainable entrepreneurship, whereas barriers may hinder it. Although research on the environment’s influence on entrepreneurial orientation in the western hemisphere is plentiful [11], the case with other global regions is rather different, and even more so when it comes to sustainable orientation of startups, despite the knowledge that those startups may constitute a promising innovative contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [12].

The Middle East and North Africa region in particular offers an interesting context for this research; in this case, Turkey: it is situated at the junction of Europe and Asia and has largely adopted the Western style of economic markets and entrepreneurial ecosystems as well as its social lifestyle, while retaining Islamic cultural influences [13]. Furthermore, the unstable political environment in recent years has deterred large investors, meanwhile creating more challenges for sustainable development, hence requiring more innovative solutions (e.g., from sustainably orientated startups). Furthermore, although the Turkish government recognizes the importance of fostering entrepreneurship by creating a positive environment for entrepreneurs (e.g., by launching several support programs), young startup founders still face a number of barriers while founding a new business. The barriers of starting a business are even higher when wanting to start a sustainable business [14]. The Middle East and Africa are interestingly home to the world’s highest level of entrepreneurial intention [15], despite (or potentially because of) institutional fragility and resulting barriers. Therefore, this study seeks to address the question: to what extent do contextual support factors and barriers impact sustainable orientation in Turkish startups?

By targeting this research question, this study contributes to literature on sustainable entrepreneurship, institutional and contextual impact on entrepreneurship, as well as entrepreneurship in unstable and emerging economies. We harness quantitative methods, namely linear regression modeling, to assess the relationship between perceived support and barriers in the Turkish entrepreneurial ecosystem on the sustainable orientation of startup founders using first-hand collected data, thereby also enriching entrepreneurship literature through quantitative methods combining micro- and macro-level perspectives. This research is also designed to aid practitioners and decision-makers in understanding the impact of their ecosystem support decisions on sustainability, showing that entrepreneurs may develop sustainability-oriented mindsets and behaviors regardless of contextual challenges.

2. Theoretical Background

2.1. Entrepreneurship, Sustainability, and Orientation

Business activities are considered a key factor contributing to environmental threats [16], and studies also show that several types of market imperfections (to name a few, inefficient firms, externalities, flawed pricing mechanisms, and information asymmetries) contribute to environmental degradation [1]. Therefore, the promising goals of entrepreneurship, namely the process of identifying and addressing (market) needs and opportunities through new business activity, do not necessarily imply positive social or environmental values as a result. Extensive economic growth and increases in the quality of life in recent decades have also had substantial negative effects on nature and society. This includes unsustainable and intensive consumption [17], air pollution, surface-water degradation, and toxic wastes in groundwater, which contributed to global scale effects such as climate change, destruction of fisheries, and over-utilization of non-renewable resources, as well as socioeconomic inequality [1,18].

Nonetheless, it is also argued that market imperfections are sources of significant entrepreneurial opportunities that establish the foundations for sustainable entrepreneurship, which describes the effort of linking entrepreneurship to sustainability. This involves the discovery and exploitation of business needs and opportunities that contribute to sustainability by generating social and environmental profits for others in society [1,2,3,5,6]. In contrast to regular entrepreneurs, the aim of sustainable entrepreneurs is therefore not primarily focused on value creation for private gains. In other words, sustainable entrepreneurship describes the concept, which was introduced by Elkington [19], of entrepreneurs balancing the triple bottom line framework, which consists of three elements: social, environmental, and economic.

Both sustainability and entrepreneurship require innovation, which, applied to both fields, implies a creative new combination of existing resources [20]. Startups therefore may represent an important driver of sustainable development, because they have a high potential to innovate, in contrast to large organizations [21,22]. Moreover, sustainability-oriented startups place value on business activities that directly address environmental and social challenges [23,24]. Thus, the potential of startups, and especially sustainability-oriented startups, contributing positively to social wellbeing and economic development is high.

Sustainable orientation refers to the social responsibility and level of concern about the environment of individuals [25], which is a manifestation of the individual’s beliefs, convictions, and attitudes. In the scope of our study, we view sustainable orientation as the entrepreneurs’ beliefs, convictions, and attitudes towards the fulfillment of social and/or ecologic goals throughout their entrepreneurial journey. Sustainably-oriented individuals are more likely to perceive opportunities which result from unsustainable economic behavior and to act in accordance with their social and environmental beliefs. Sustainable orientation can therefore be considered as an antecedent of sustainable entrepreneurial intention, leading to actual sustainable entrepreneurial actions.

2.2. The Role of Context

Entrepreneurial behavior occurs in different contexts and in close interaction with other individuals and the external environment. A person with a favorable attitude towards starting a business may be prevented from doing so when perceiving environmental barriers, such as financial institutions and governmental regulations, as too high [8,9,10]. The ability to take effective action towards business creation depends on an environment that provides suitable opportunity, and which allows the entrepreneur to assemble needed resources. Therefore, a person may primarily start their own business because of the perception that the environment is favorable for becoming self-employed. Relevant contextual factors may include legal, institutional, and regulatory frameworks, as well as socio-economic, cultural, and historical factors. Specific examples include national startup support services (e.g., innovation policies [26], educational/training programs [27,28], and public funding [8,29]), social norms and pressures [30,31], protection of intellectual property rights [8,9,32], and the general economic milieu [7,33], while barriers may include a lack of access to finances [34,35], corruption [36,37], and administrative burden [26,31].

The acknowledgement of context’s influence on entrepreneurial orientation and intention and subsequent behavior may draw on Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior [38]. The theory postulates that an individual’s attitudes (i.e., beliefs about a behavior), subjective norms (i.e., the society/community’s views and judgements regarding a behavior), and perceived control (i.e., the person’s perception of the ease or difficulty of performing a behavior) shape their behavior. Thus an individual’s behavioral intention is seen as a manifestation of their perception of social pressures and values and the degree of support and barriers exhibited by the contextual environment which may promote or hinder the behavior. Accordingly, an entrepreneur’s (sustainable) behavior reflects the belief or feeling of being supported or challenged by various contextual factors. This may be especially relevant for sustainability-driven entrepreneurs, as combining social and environmental value with financial profitability adds more challenges to business founders, which translates to a higher need for supportive contextual structures [14,39]. In addition, this is highly relevant in environments where support might be limited and barriers may be high, such as those with political turmoil or fragile institutions. It is also an interesting perspective to study the prerequisites to behavior, in this case sustainable orientation, in cultures where persons are generally less individualistic and more likely to behave in alignment with collective expectations and social/religious values.

Particularly when it comes to developing sustainable orientation and subsequent action, it has been shown that individuals are more likely to act prosocially when they face less (psychological) stress and insecurity [40]. In other words, it is difficult to care for others when one cannot fulfill one’s own needs. Therefore, the support vs. barriers ratio needs to remain high enough to enable enough psychological safety and wellbeing in entrepreneurs in order to foster sustainable orientation. Moreover, perceiving low availability of resources and support may lead to moral disengagement of individuals from prosocial and pro-environmental values [41], where individuals would justify lacking those priorities by the unavailability of support or the presence of too many barriers to fulfilling their own needs.

While studies regarding a context’s impact on sustainable orientation of startup founders remain limited overall [42], such research is particularly scarce in contexts outside of stable, western countries (with some exceptions, for instance in Ghana [43] and Pakistan [44]). Given the sustainability crises in more fragile global contexts as well as the inability of governance structure and top-down strategies to optimally address developmental needs [45], the need to understand sustainability driven entrepreneurs that may fuel bottom-up sustainable development is crucial. Turkey in particular is characterized as an emerging economy with a growing GDP, yet a politically turbulent context with relatively shaky relationships with its European Union neighbors, which may translate to constraints on entrepreneurial support. This research therefore extends the use of the theory of planned behavior to the understudied Turkish context, aiming to address the following hypotheses based on the above arguments:

Hypothesis 1 (H1).

Perception of contextual support positively impacts sustainable orientation.

Hypothesis 2 (H2).

Perception of contextual barriers negatively impacts sustainable orientation.

3. Materials and Methods

To test the aforementioned hypotheses, a questionnaire was designed including two key independent variables on context perception (perceived support and perceived barriers) and the dependent variable sustainable orientation. Those three variables were primarily adapted from Kuckertz and Wagner’s [25] work, which in turn partially builds on Lüthje and Franke’s items [10]. All items are measured on a 5-point scale, ranking from “Very accurate” to “Not at all accurate”. The questionnaire items reflecting perceived support are “Entrepreneurs have a positive image within society”, “Qualified consultancy and service support for new companies is available”, and “The creative atmosphere at my company inspires the development of ideas for new businesses”. Perceived barriers are measured through the items “Banks do not readily give credit to startup companies”, “State laws (rules and regulations) are adverse to running a company”, and “It is hard to find a business idea for a business that has not been realized before”. The full questionnaire can be found in Appendix A.

The measure for sustainable orientation was created and confirmed by Kuckertz and Wagner [25]. The items were rated on the same 5-point scale, ranging from “Very accurate” to “Not at all accurate” and were derived from the literature from fields of “environmental psychology, environmental and social entrepreneurship and sustainability management” (p. 531). The authors argue that the items referring to environmental protection and social responsibility essentially reflect attitudes and beliefs. The items to operationalize sustainability orientation are “Turkish firms should take an internationally leading role in the field of environmental protection”, “Firms that are environmentally oriented have advantages in recruiting and retaining qualified employees”, “The environmental performance of a company will in future be considered more and more by financial institutions”, “Corporate social responsibility should be part of the foundations of each company”, “I think that environmental problems are one of the biggest challenges for our society”; and “I think that entrepreneurs and companies need to take on a larger social responsibility”. The word “Turkish” replaces “German”, which was used in the original survey.

As control variables we include gender, age, and education. This is due to the realization that gender influences entrepreneurial opportunities and intention, as well as behavior [46]. Likewise, age could play a role in determining sustainable behavior, as younger generations have been shown to be more sustainability-oriented [47,48]. As for education, an entrepreneur’s human capital plays a role in their ability to overcome barriers as well as utilize supportive resources in their environment. Additionally, questions were included on the participants’ migration background as well as the type/branch of founded company.

The questionnaire was created with the help of the survey software LimeSurvey and data were collected between July 2021 and February 2022. To ensure the completeness of the collected data, all items of the questionnaire were marked as mandatory. It was shared online to accelerators, incubators, venture capitalists, and similar institutions operating in Turkey via email. They were asked to share the survey link in their mailing list with their startup founders or directly forward the survey to them. Accelerators and incubators who did not respond within two weeks received two reminders with an interval of approximately two weeks. A total of 106 accelerators and incubators were contacted, through which approximately 833 startup founders were reached in total. The final dataset consists of 70 individual responses, which accounts for a response rate of 8.4 percent.

Cronbach’s α measurement was used to test the reliability of the measures. For the independent variable perceived support Cronbach’s α values is 0.62 and for perceived barriers it is 0.63. The dependent variable sustainable orientation has a Cronbach’s α value of 0.79. All three values are acceptable, indicating that the questionnaire items do indeed measure what they intend to [49]. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) measure was used to test sampling adequacy, with results indicating sampling adequacy for all three variables, ranging from 0.59 to 0.73 [49]. A bias due to non-response is not to be expected since all questions in the questionnaire were mandatory to answer. A linear regression model was built to assess the relationship between the independent and dependent variables using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). No multicollinearity was detected among the independent variables, with a Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) value of 1.018.

4. Results

4.1. Descriptive Statistics

From the 70 respondents, 17% identify themselves as female. The majority of entrepreneurs are between 19 and 35 years old (70%). Over 80% of study participants have completed a university degree, and about 17% have a migrant background. Most of the founders operate technology-based companies (87%), which primarily include innovation-based services (such as drone delivery, medical delivery, indoor delivery, or SaaS), technology development (such as holography, virtual reality, or artificial intelligence), production, software development, platform development, and digital consulting. The means, standard deviations, and Pearson correlations of the variables are summarized in

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics of the dependent variable.

Dependent Variable	Mean	Standard Deviation
Sustainable Orientation	3.82	0.69
Constituent Elements
Leading role in environmental protection	3.67	1.10
Advantages environmentally orientation	3.16	0.94
Consideration by financial institutions	3.67	1.03
Corporate social responsibility	4.14	0.95
Biggest challenges of our society	4.09	0.91
Taking on greater CSR	4.17	0.98

N = 70.

,

Table 2. Descriptive Statistics of the independent variables.

Independent Variable	Mean	Standard Deviation
Perceived Support	3.73	0.75
Constituent Elements
Entrepreneur’s image within society	3.74	0.97
Consultancy and service support	3.34	1.15
Creative and supportive environment	4.11	0.81
Perceived Barriers	3.24	0.90
Constituent Elements
Credit availability	3.50	1.23
Rules and regulations	3.16	1.19
Business idea generation	3.06	1.17

N = 70.

and

Table 3. Pearson correlations between the dependent and independent variables.

		Sustainable Orientation	Perceived Support	Perceived Barriers
Sustainable Orientation	Pearson Correlation	1	0.420 **	−0.202
	Sig. (2-taled)		<0.001	0.094
	N = 70	70	70	70
Perceived Support	Pearson Correlation	0.420 **	1	−0.272 *
	Sig. (2-taled)	<0.001		0.023
	N = 70	70	70	70
Perceived Barriers	Pearson Correlation	−0.202	−0.272 *	1
	Sig. (2-taled)	0.094	0.023
	N = 70	70	70	70

* p ≤ 0.05, ** p ≤ 0.01.

.

4.2. Hypothesis Testing

The results of the linear regression analysis are summarized in

Table 4. Linear Regression Model predicting Sustainable Orientation.

	Model 1 (Controls Only)		Model 2 (All Variables)
	B	SE	B	SE
Control Variables
Age (DV: Between 19–35)	0.460 *	0.179	0.403 *	0.166
Higher Education (DV: Yes)	−0.136	0.213	−0.123	0.198
Gender (DV: Male)	−0.067	0.208	0.024	0.193
Independent Variables
Perceived Support			0.344 **	0.104
Perceived Barriers			−0.063	0.086
R2	0.113		0.269
Adjusted R2	0.073		0.212

DV = Dummy Variable, * p ≤ 0.05, ** p ≤ 0.01.

, and they indicate a particular confirmation of the hypotheses. Perceived support appears to significantly (p < 0.01) predict sustainable orientation, providing evidence for Hypothesis 1, while perceived barriers do not appear to have a significant correlation (p > 0.05) with sustainable orientation. Therefore, evidence for Hypothesis 2 could not be found. Neither the control variable’s gender nor education seem to have a correlation with the dependent variable, whereas age has appeared to have a significant influence on sustainable orientation. The R-squared value of the model is 0.269, which is considered acceptable [50].

5. Discussion

The confirmation of Hypothesis 1 provides evidence for the importance of a supportive environment for startups to orient themselves towards sustainable value creation. This generally provides support for the theory of planned behavior, which has not often been tested in Middle Eastern contexts or in the context of sustainable entrepreneurship (with some exceptions) [51]. Therefore, it appears as though entrepreneurial individuals’ sustainable orientation is influenced by their beliefs about the existence of factors that encourage and ease the undertaking of sustainable actions in alignment with the theory.

This is also in alignment with previous studies that have found that support programs, such as accelerators or business incubators, promote a start-up’s contribution to sustainability [52,53,54]. Since all survey participants are affiliated with such support programs, it could be assumed that this received support promotes their orientation towards sustainability. This may be through the provision of resources which may help entrepreneurs to reduce costs and efforts of planning and administration [55], or reducing administrative and bureaucratic burden [56,57] (which is particularly problematic in countries with weak governance systems or chaotic bureaucratic processes). This kind of support may reduce psychological burden and stress on entrepreneurs, which in turn encourages and may strengthen their prosocial inclinations and creative behavior [53,58]. Additionally, the mentoring and coaching sessions, as well as the knowhow transfer, helps entrepreneurs to efficiently evolve their business skills, allowing them to better utilize resources for sustainable value [52]. Additionally, financial support may allow the freedom and resulting reduced pressure that leads to a greater willingness to invest in sustainable value creation [52,59,60] In addition, the increasing attention upon sustainability within society may lead to social pressure to uphold sustainable values [61].

The results of this analysis could not find evidence for the influence of perceived barriers on sustainable orientation, therefore Hypothesis 2 is not confirmed, which may appear to contradict other studies that indicate that sustainability-driven entrepreneurs are faced with several contextual challenges (e.g., [39]). One reason for our results could be explained by the study sample, as it can be assumed that our survey participants have a more privileged background that leaves them more sheltered from contextual hurdles. Individuals with higher levels of (psychological) human capital are more likely to be able to maneuver and overcome challenges that may be posed by unstable environmental conditions [62,63], which might play a role in explaining our results. Additionally, the fact that the majority of the sample is constituted of men, who generally face less barriers to entrepreneurship than other genders [64], may play a role in explaining the results.

Nevertheless, it may be expected that the uncertainty in the economic and political environment due to change in state policies, volatility in foreign exchange prices, and high cost of financing, would cause Turkish entrepreneurs to perceive barriers as fairly high. It is therefore possible that those entrepreneurs indeed face several challenges, yet they are able to overcome them thanks to the support which they receive (e.g., involvement in accelerator programs). This would conclude that despite perceiving barriers, as long as financial, societal, and business support is available, entrepreneurs are still able to develop sustainable orientation and behavior. The findings hence reveal that focusing on support factors may help to improve sustainable orientation of entrepreneurs, despite the existence of barriers. This is of particular importance for decision-makers responsible for promoting sustainable entrepreneurship, such as governments, private capital providers, and educators. Additionally, this may provide a glimmer of hope for grassroot organizations operating in challenging environments, as it may show that their support can indeed help to promote sustainable orientation despite difficult circumstances. It shows that with an appealing environment for entrepreneurs, sustainability goals can be achieved more purposefully.

The finding that younger age is a significant predictor of sustainable orientation is also consistent with recent studies indicating that younger generations are likely to work in pro-SDG businesses even for lower financial profits and are generally more sustainability-minded and -oriented than older generations [48]. This translates to the importance of providing a supportive environment for entrepreneurship, particularly for youth, as they may be more likely to make use of provided resources in a sustainable manner. This also indicates the potential need to educate and raise awareness amongst older (entrepreneurial) generations on sustainability issues and sustainable business models.

6. Conclusions

To meet the increasing social and environmental challenges of our generation, it is important for a country’s institutions to promote sustainable activities. How support and barriers impact the sustainable orientation of entrepreneurs is a topic that has received little scholarly attention thus far, especially in the context of developing and emerging economies outside of the western hemisphere. This paper has therefore attempted to address this research gap within the Turkish context. We conducted an empirical analysis using a quantitative dataset of 70 Turkish entrepreneurs, most of whom are founders of technology startups who are affiliated with members of the Turkish startup ecosystem. Our findings indicate that perceived support indeed has a positive impact on the sustainable orientation of entrepreneurs. However, a relationship between barriers and sustainable orientation could not be concluded. Additionally, founder age appears to impact sustainable orientation.

This research therefore extends the application of the theory of planned behavior to the context of sustainable entrepreneurship in the Middle East region, indicating that the perception of the ease of performing (sustainable) behaviors indeed influences the beliefs and convictions about sustainability (i.e., sustainable orientation). It may therefore be concluded that perceived support contributes to higher perceived behavioral control in Turkish entrepreneurs with respect to sustainability-related actions. It also provides evidence that despite perceiving barriers, support programs could help entrepreneurs overcome those barriers and positively impact sustainable orientation. This not only expands the literature on sustainable entrepreneurship, contextual entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial psychology, but it provides hope for startup and sustainability support initiatives that, despite environmental challenges, entrepreneurs may still contribute to addressing sustainability crises if more adequate support is needed.

This paper is subject to certain limitations regarding its content and methodology. First, the limitation regarding the data collection method can be listed. Since the survey was conducted online and distributed via startup support institutions, only those entrepreneurs who are part of those programs could be reached, which potentially leads to a biased result. Further, the representativeness of online surveys has been criticized because only people with internet access can be reached via online distribution channels [65]. However, since this paper defines entrepreneurs as innovative startup founders, it is legitimate to assume that the target group has internet access. Nevertheless, informal entrepreneurs play an important role in a country’s economic development as well [66,67], yet are not directly addressed in this study. Future studies could thereby analyze the impact of institutional support and barriers on the sustainable orientation of those entrepreneurs who are not part of support programs [68] and may a lack a formal and/or online presence.

Secondly, data collection using self-reported questionnaires is bound to suffer from certain shortcomings. For instance, multiple-choice questions with predefined categories may create an oversimplified view of reality [65] and be biased through end aversion or central tendency, where respondents tend to choose the middle answer options and avoid the ends of scales [69]. The social desirability bias may also lead respondents to choose the option which they think is most desired by the interviewer [69,70]. However, to reduce such biases, the submission of the surveys was anonymous and only questionnaire items were used which had been previously validated.

Finally, we acknowledge the relatively small sample size and simple nature of the analysis. In a study with a mere 70 participants and two independent variables, the results would naturally indicate a limited version of reality and caution should be taken when attempting to generalize the conclusions. The relatively low response rate of 8.4% may also limit the generalizability of the results. However, we are confident that the statistical results are valid despite the smaller sample size, as indicated by the results of the KMO test on sampling adequacy as well as the ratio of number of variables: sample size being less than 1:10 [71]. Additionally, replacing the word “German” with “Turkish” in the survey may also lead to some biases as the survey slightly deviates from the original one. However, this was necessary to align with the study context, and the resulting questionnaire items appear to validly measure what they intend to measure as confirmed by the Cronbach alpha test. The data collection was also hindered by COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Future research is encouraged to extend the sample size, as well as to include differentiated variables on different support factors and barriers. Qualitative studies to explain the results are also encouraged, as well as those that zoom in on gendered support needs and barriers in particular, especially in a Middle Eastern context such as that of Turkey.