BEHAVIOURAL DETERMINANTS AND TRANSITION PATHWAYS OF RURAL YOUTH ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN AGRICULTURE-LINKED CONTEXTS: A SYSTEMATIC AND BIBLIOMETRIC REVIEW

Abstract

Rural youth entrepreneurship is increasingly viewed as an important pathway for addressing youth employment challenges, strengthening agrarian livelihoods, and improving local economic resilience. However, existing research is widely scattered across behavioural, social, and institutional perspectives, with most studies focusing on entrepreneurial intention rather than actual transition into enterprise activity. This review brings together and interprets the evidence on behavioural determinants and transition pathways influencing rural youth’s movement into entrepreneurship by combining a systematic literature review with bibliometric analysis. A total of 98 peer reviewed journal articles published between 2015 and 2025 were retrieved from the Scopus database using PRISMA-based screening and analysed through the Bibliometrix-Biblioshiny framework in R. The results show a sharp rise in publications after 2020, expanding international participation, and a knowledge structure strongly centred on behavioural drivers, youth characteristics, and rural agrarian enterprise contexts. Thematic patterns indicate a clear shift from intention-based models toward behaviour execution, sustainability, and agribusiness linked entrepreneurship. The synthesis highlights four interacting determinant groups: behavioural, social, institutional, and rural-context factors, with self-efficacy, motivation, attitude, and opportunity perception emerging as the most consistent influences. Four behavioural transition pathways and an integrated conceptual framework are proposed to guide future empirical and policy-oriented research in rural youth entrepreneurship.