Author(s): Adlah A. Alessa
There is no known research on shops on wheels; therefore, this paper aims to investigate the effect of the personal characteristics of entrepreneurs, self-efficacy (SE), opportunities and necessity (OP), and motivation (MO) on entrepreneurial behavior (EB) among shop-on-wheel businesses. The total number of male and female respondents was 293, while 137 respondents were deleted due to incomplete answers. We distribute questionnaires in three major cities, Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dammam, targeting shops on wheels. The process of studying nascent entrepreneurs took approximately one year. As a result, this study found that bridging and bonding SE had a high correlation with MO, and no associations were found among EB, SE and OP. With regard to the outcomes of MO and the demographic characteristics gender, marital status, and major, being parents who own their business had a statistically significant positive effect. EB had a statistically significant positive impact only with regard to major. In terms of SE, educational level and being parents who own their business were statistically significant. Finally, OP had a statistically significant relationship with only one variable, which is being parents who own their business. Additionally, the findings indicate that EB is not the key factor for nascent entrepreneurs; rather, the key factor is SE with MO. Our findings strongly contribute to a better understanding of EB and its association with SE, OP, and MO. We believe that our findings provide valuable information and knowledge about the EB of nascent entrepreneurs who started their business within the last year and that they contribute to scarce research involving this sample, where more variables need to be added and considered to focus more on this sample.