Relationship among Influential Factors of Entrepreneurial Intention: An Associational Study

Abstract

Nowadays, entrepreneurship has become an important concept in economic, social, and political aspects of our lives. In addition, research on entrepreneurship and significant factors which influence entrepreneurs’ intention has become a topic of interest for scholars in many countries. In the past few years, the number of universities offering entrepreneurship courses have increased dramatically, which indicates the increasing importance of entrepreneurship in social, economic, and political dimensions. This research in entrepreneurship has adopted intention models based on Ajzen’s theory of Planned Behavior and aims to find out the relationship among influential factors of entrepreneurial intention (i.e., education, previous experience, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control) and investigate their effects on entrepreneurial intention. The study was carried out with postgraduate students and the data was collected from 380 male and female master students in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) who were in their final year of study. The results showed that there were statistically positive significant relationships among education, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control of postgraduate students. However, there was no statistical relationship between education and attitude. The results might be helpful for the governments and university policy makers who try to motivate students to become entrepreneurs.