Revisiting Entrepreneurial Constraints: Insights into Financial, Infrastructural, Regulatory, and Socio-Cultural Impacts on SME Growth in Nigeria

Abstract

The paper investigates how SMEs in Abuja, Nigeria, have grown by examining how four major entrepreneurial issues, namely, financial constraints (FC), infrastructural deficiencies (IDF), regulatory inconsistencies (RI), and socio-cultural barriers (SCB), have influenced this growth. The study uses multiple regression to investigate the effect of these entrepreneurial constraints on SME growth using the data of 350 valid responses collected using a structured questionnaire. The results indicate that, of the entrepreneurial constraints being examined, FC are those that impact the SME growth most. Besides, socio-cultural obstacles, infrastructural shortages, and inconsistencies in regulations also have a strong influence on SME development. The results indicate that the SCB have the most dominant constraint in this study, and they were followed by RI, IDF, and FC. The research also adds to the theoretical knowledge by supporting the FC theory and resource-based view and elaborating on the institutional theory in terms of the contribution of regulatory frameworks. The findings are informative to policymakers, financial institutions, and business owners, and therefore, there is a need to implement specific interventions to reduce the challenges of SMEs in emerging economies like Nigeria.

Received: 26 August 2025 | Revised: 28 February 2026 | Accepted: 7 April 2026

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

Data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Author Contribution Statement

Olumide Abiodun Ayetigbo: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administration. Olalekan Charles Okunlola: Validation, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administration. Ifegwu John Ifegwu: Validation, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Visualization. Emmanuel Ojonugwa Okoliko: Software, Resources.