Sustainability Commitment, Early-stage Entrepreneurial Activity and Entrepreneurial Eco-system Quality: A European Perspective

This paper aims to explore the level of the sustainability commitment of earlystage entrepreneurs, recognizing that such commitment depends, at least in part, on supporting governmental programs and policies, cultural and social norms, perceptions of the priorities given to sustainability issues and quality of other components of the national entrepreneurial ecosystems.Datasets that feed into the k-means cluster analysis come from the adult population survey conducted by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor in 2023.The analysis of the data from 20 European countries that participated in the survey, shows that there are significant differences between two distinctive clusters of countries depending on the extent to which sustainability aspects and value creation goals are considered among entrepreneurs engaged in the early-stage entrepreneurial activity.Furthermore, the results show significant differences between these two clusters in terms of the quality of national entrepreneurial eco-systems.The results suggest that the quality of the national support has an important, yet not expected, influence on the sustainability considerations among earlystage entrepreneurial activity.A better understanding the complexity of the entrepreneurial eco-systems and their interactions with the extent of the sustainability considerations among new entrepreneurs may help to close the gap in the sustainability entrepreneurship research and fulfil the goals of the sustainable development agenda.