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This study aims to identify students’ perceptions of the importance and objectives of sustainability and business ethics education, considering contextual factors (ethics-friendly environments) and including the social desirability (SD) bias to strengthen data robustness and assess response truthfulness.

A survey was administered to 170 business students at an Icelandic university to measure their attitudes and perceptions toward sustainability and business ethics courses. Descriptive statistics, Mann–Whitney tests, χ² tests and multivariate regression were used for the analysis.

The results show no significant differences among participants, depending on individual and organizational factors. The authors did not find significant differences in gender, age or exposure to sustainability and business ethics courses concerning social desirability bias. Contextual solid factors can explain these results.

This study expands on previous research by examining students’ perceptions of sustainability and business ethics education in an “ethics-friendly environment” like Iceland, a new and fertile territory for business ethics education research. These elements are crucial for further research on students’ attitudes toward sustainability and business ethics and the role of this subject in university curricula.

Drawing on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TBP) and Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), this study delves into how, in entrepreneurship-unfriendly environments, university students’ entrepreneurial intention (EI) is shaped, focusing particularly on the role of entrepreneurship education (EE) and an entrepreneurial family context (EFC).

A sample of 688 students at a Spanish university was used for testing our hypotheses using GUESSS project data, through PLS-SEM regression and multigroup analysis (entrepreneurship course vs non-course students).

Positive and significant impacts of entrepreneurial attitude (EA) and entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) on EI, and of subjective norms (SN) on EA and ESE, were found in both groups. Conversely, the impacts of an EFC on EA, SN and EI were significant only for course students, and the impact of SN on EI was significant only for non-course students. The impact of EFC on ESE was not significant for either group.

This investigation delves into how the TPB components shape university students’ EI in entrepreneurship-unfriendly contexts, and offers an original multigroup analysis to explore the role of EE in such dynamics. A novel contribution of this study is the finding that EE is a relevant catalyser for making entrepreneurial parents become an effective trigger for entrepreneurship. Conversely, EE was, unexpectedly, deemed irrelevant or counter-productive for some aspects of entrepreneurial dynamics. Further research is encouraged, delving into the role of social and cultural contexts.