**2. The current study**

Extending the previous study, we shift our framing in this chapter to one that maps various types of capital to community systems. More specifically, we connect location and human, social, community, and business capitals to the built environment, health, communications, civic, education, and business systems. We examine these issues formally by addressing the following research questions:


*The Connection between Entrepreneurial Intentions and Community Member Priorities… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112287*


Our analysis provides insights into how these factors improve our understanding of community interest in and willingness to allocate resources to innovations in various systems serving the community. For simplicity in this chapter, we will refer to the types of capital (location, human, social, community, and business) associated with each question in the narrative that follows.

To investigate economic and quality-of-life priorities in Texas (USA) communities, we conducted a survey of 5487 residents from 85 different communities, including those in rural areas, small towns, medium-sized cities, and large urban centers. The survey asked participants to allocate interest points among six economic development project concepts that were strategically chosen to fit their town or neighborhood. We aimed to predict respondent priorities based on factors such as degree of urbanity and rurality, social position, community values, personality types, community asset satisfaction and importance, and entrepreneurial intentions. Our approach prioritizes the perspectives of community members in determining which projects should be prioritized, taking into account how individual needs and community needs are connected and impact each other. By taking a human-centered approach to economic and quality-of-life development, we hope to improve community well-being by adapting decision-making processes to the unique needs of each community (**Table 1**).



#### **Table 1.**

*Community asset satisfaction subscales.*

## **3. Expanding the concept of well-being: the importance of community and quality of life in economic development**

A well-being economy refers to an economy that prioritizes the well-being of collective human society and the ecological environment, instead of material growth [4]. For example, developing local entrepreneurship is one way to directly involve community members in economic development. Instead of imposing external answers to supposed community needs, community members have embedded knowledge of community needs and embedded networks that could meet those needs [5]. The Well-being Economy Alliance in Scotland [6] reports that Scotland's craft brewing sector is an example of how local production supports the local economy and is good for the environment, especially in rural areas. Our study builds on research [7] studying the degree to which, if at all, entrepreneurial intentions predict investment in collective well-being interventions. The availability of good jobs, opportunities for human flourishing, and options for community creation are as important—and possibly more important—than a narrow focus on economic growth. The concept of a human-centered approach to sustainable community development is inspired by human-centered design literature, which emphasizes involving the human perspective in every step of planning and development to create product solutions. However, this approach is not widely used in psychosocial interventions and implementation strategies [8]. In sustainable community development, quality of life is used as a framework to plan for locally appropriate and sustainable economic development, which requires information at the individual, community, and economic levels. Quality of life provides a domain of observation that allows for measuring the balance between economic and community concerns. Individual needs are shaped by their personality type, personal values, well-being, and levels of perceived community attachment and satisfaction [9, 10]. Community well-being, on the other hand, is influenced by individual-level needs, underlying community assets, levels of community satisfaction with those assets, and shared culture and values among individuals in the community [11–13], Hanscott 2016. McGregor, Camfield, and Woodcock [14] found that people identify their needs and interpret their quality of life in a local context, which suggests that economic development should assess not only satisfaction with community assets but also their importance to community members.

#### **4. Method**

We utilize mixed multi-level hurdle models to analyze community member responses and explain the outcomes of an investment allocation exercise in economic *The Connection between Entrepreneurial Intentions and Community Member Priorities… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112287*

development and quality-of-life development concepts. Our analysis incorporates a range of factors that could influence decision-making. For example, we consider community size, population density, and proximity to major urban centers to assess the impact of urbanity and rurality. We also include values, personality traits such as agreeableness and openness, satisfaction with and perceived importance of community resources, and intentions for entrepreneurial behavior as well as related attitudes, social norms, and perceived behavioral control. Additionally, we analyze the effects of demographic variables and the perceived impact of COVID-19 on the community.

We hypothesize that values and agreeableness will predict preferences for economic and quality-of-life interventions given limited resources. The satisfaction with and importance of available resources are also expected to play a role in resource allocation decisions. Furthermore, we suggest that entrepreneurship may be an effective mechanism for implementing certain types of projects, but some interventions may be better approached as a common good with less salience for entrepreneurs.

### **5. Procedure and participants**

This chapter's data were gathered in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, in two phases. A purposeful community sampling methodology was employed to gather information from eighty rural and small-town communities situated outside of the five most populous metropolitan areas in Texas, namely Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso. Student researchers were hired to promote the project and share links to a web-based survey in the rural and small-town communities involved in the study. To encourage participation, these researchers employed various methods, such as social media, telephone calls to community leaders and members, and disseminating electronic flyers to local groups to post on their websites. Funding for school computer equipment was provided to the community with the highest number of completed surveys per capita. The participants from the five largest metro areas were obtained through a commercial panel, Dynata. The rural and smalltown surveys were conducted during the summer of 2020, while the major metro surveys were conducted during the fall of 2020. Our institutional review board approved the study. However, survey response rates were not disclosed as we used community promotion and referral sampling methods that make it difficult to determine the total number of community members made aware of the study.

Our analysis is based on survey data collected from 3363 rural and small-town residents and 2124 individuals residing in the five largest metro areas in Texas. **Table 2**



**Table 2.**

*Sample demographics.*

outlines the sample's demographic descriptive statistics. We intentionally selected rural and small-town communities from a larger research initiative that deployed students across the state of Texas, USA, to evaluate community resilience. These communities varied in population size, with an average of 24,692 and a median of 7325, ranging from Bandera, with a population of 910 in 2021, to Amarillo, with a population of 199,747 in 2021. The complete list of rural communities is available in the manuscript's data supplement. The five metro areas were chosen for their large population sizes, with all having a 2021 population of over one million, except for El Paso, which has a population of 963,000.
