Resumen de Perceptions of formal and informal financing sources as a predictor of female university students’ entrepreneurial intentions

Alejandro Campos Sánchez, Citalli Rocío Flores Rodríguez, Gloria Yaneth Zápari Romero

• This research aims to demonstrate how the female university students’ perceptions of the two main categories of financing—formal and informal—can influence their entrepreneurial intentions. Analyzing data collected through a custom-designed instrument grounded in existing literature via a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach, the study draws on a sample of 473 female university students from a public university in Mexico. The findings reveal that perceptions of the importance, accessibility, and convenience of formal financing sources—such as bank loans, government credit programs, and other institutional financial services—exert a stronger influence on entrepreneurial intentions than perceptions of informal financing sources—such as loans from family or friends, non-institutional angel investors, and informal lenders such as loan sharks.