PARENTING STYLES, CULTURE AND ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTION: EVIDENCE FROM POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS IN SOUTH-EASTERN NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES

This study examined the relationship between parenting styles and the entrepreneurial intention of postgraduate students in universities in South-Eastern Nigeria, with culture tested as a moderating variable. Adopting a cross-sectional survey design within a positivist, quantitative framework, structured questionnaires were administered to a sample of 377 postgraduate students drawn from five federal universities in Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo States, with sample size determined using the Krejcie and Morgan table; 346 (92%) valid responses were retrieved and analysed using SPSS version 26. Three dimensions of parenting style - authoritarian, authoritative and permissive - were assessed against three measures of entrepreneurial intention - self-efficacy, entrepreneurial passion and locus of control. Ten null hypotheses were tested using Spearman's rank-order correlation coefficient, while the moderating role of culture was tested using partial correlation. All ten null hypotheses were rejected: every dimension of parenting style correlated positively and significantly with every measure of entrepreneurial intention (p < 0.05), and culture significantly moderated the relationship between parenting style and entrepreneurial intention (zero-order r = 0.589; partial r = 0.451; p = 0.000). Permissive and authoritarian parenting showed the strongest association with locus of control, while authoritative parenting produced the most balanced pattern of association across the three outcomes. The study concludes that parenting style is a significant antecedent of entrepreneurial intention among Nigerian university students and recommends that university management and policymakers design entrepreneurship-support frameworks that reinforce the positive parenting-related dispositions students bring into higher education.