The influence of digital entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial orientation on intention of family businesses to adopt artificial intelligence: examining the mediating role of business innovativeness

Purpose This study aims to investigate the adoption intention of artificial intelligence (AI) in family businesses through the perspectives of digital entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship orientation. Design/methodology/approach The study examines contributing factors explaining the adoption intention of AI in the context of family businesses. The developed research model is examined and validated using structural equation modelling based on 631 respondents' data. Purposeful sampling is used to collect the respondents' data. Findings The proposed model included two endogenous (i.e. business innovativeness and adoption intention) and six exogenous variables (i.e. affordances, culture and flexible design, entrepreneurial orientation, generativity, openness and technology orientation) through ten direct paths and three indirect paths. The results depicted the significant influence of all the exogenous variables on the endogenous variable reflecting support of all the hypotheses. The business innovativeness partially mediates the relationships of culture and flexible design, entrepreneurial orientation and technology orientation with adoption intention. Further, the results demonstrated a model variance of 24.6% for business innovativeness and 64.2% for adoption intention of artificial intelligence in the family business. Research limitations/implications The study contributes to theoretical developments in entrepreneurship and family business research and AI's theoretical progress, especially to digital entrepreneurship. Originality/value Theoretically, it contributes to the literature of entrepreneurship, particularly digital entrepreneurship. Additionally, the research model adds to the role of entrepreneurial orientation and digital entrepreneurship in the emerging family entrepreneurship literature. Considering the scarcity of research in this field, the empirically validated model explaining critical antecedents of AI adoption intention in the family business is a foundation for discussion, critique and future research.