Cultural values and start-up rates in the Spanish provinces

Abstract

Countries with similar economic situations exhibit persistently different entrepreneurial

activity levels. Cultural values have been called for to explain this difference. They may

condition individuals’ behaviour and significantly affect the society’s entrepreneurship rates.

Nevertheless, few empirical studies have focused on this relationship at the regional or local

level. This paper tries to fill this gap in the literature by analysing how specific cultural

values (as defined by Schwartz, 1999) can influence the number of start-ups in the different

Spanish provinces. Findings indicate the effect to be significant, contributing to explain up to

65.6% of the variance in start-up rates.