Investigation of sports management student's perceptions about social and cultural capital and entrepreneurship

Sports, which is a big industry, is seen as an important sector for individuals with entrepreneurial spirit. The increased interest of people in sports activities, especially the desire to live a healthy life, improve their physical appearance, psychological relaxation, and be in a good mood have provided the sports sector to offer new opportunities for entrepreneurship. The fact that it interacts directly or indirectly with many areas such as sports nutrition, sports tourism, sports technology, sports equipment sales, color and brand advertisements of clubs, sponsorship, souvenirs, has made sports become important in entrepreneurship. The aim of the study is to examine the relationship, similarity and differences between the entrepreneurship perception levels of sports management undergraduate students studying in the field of sports sciences and their social and cultural capital characteristics according to various variables. The population of the research is; A total of 2288 students who are studying Sports Management in the Eastern Anatolia Region. The sample is composed as a total of 1622 students who are selected by the Stratification method. In the research, three forms were used to obtain the data. These are; The Introductory Information Form, Individual Entrepreneurship Perception Scale and the Social and Cultural Capital Characteristics Scale. SPSS statistics program was used while analyzing the data. Significance level was determined as p <0.05. Findings, participants' individual entrepreneurship perceptions; no statistically significant difference was found according to the variables of gender, branch, university, father's occupation status, total monthly income of the family, geographical region of residence, place of residence and the status of the family who started their own business. A statistically significant difference was found according to age, maternal and paternal education, maternal profession, entrepreneurship education, work experience and self-entrepreneurial status. According to demographic variables, social capital characteristics were found to be statistically different in all of them, except for the geographical region and the university. In cultural capital, a statistically significant difference was found in other variables, except for the variables of university, age, mother's profession and geographic region where they live. As a result, when the effects of social and cultural capital characteristics on the individual entrepreneurship perceptions of the participants are evaluated together, the social capital features of the participants, although not alone, have a positive effect on their individual entrepreneurship perceptions along with their cultural capital characteristics. In the direction with these results, it is recommended to carry out activities that increase the social and cultural capital of the participants in order to positively increase the individual entrepreneurship of the participants. Key Words: Sport, Social Capital, Cultural Capital, Entrepreneurship