DETERMINANTS OF ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTION OF GRADUATING STUDENTS AT BAHIRDAR UNIVERSITY: AN APPLICATION OF THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOR

摘要

Entrepreneurial intention refers to motivation to establish once own business venture. It is crucial to determine potential entrepreneurs and ways to encourage individuals to involve in entrepreneurship. Therefore, this paper aims to show how the three cognitive variables such as entrepreneurial attitude, self-efficacy and subjective norm influence entrepreneurial intention of Bahir Dar University undergraduate students applying Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) theoretical frame work. The study design is cross-sectional survey. Data were collected through questionnaire from 220 business students selected through stratified random sampling. Both descriptive and inferential statistical tools had been in use to analyze the data. Besides the use of percentages, mean and standard deviation, Pearson correlation and multiple linear regressions were computed to identify the association and influence of attitude, subjective norms and self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intention of participants. Finally, One-way ANOVA, Walch f test was computed to see if there is statistically significant difference in entrepreneurial intention among students based on gender.Findings of the study, therefore, reveals that majority of students have intention to be selfemployed without significant variation between male and female students. The study finds that level of variance in their intention is considerably (56.1%) explained by attitude, subjective norms and self-efficacy and the model is better fit. Subjective norm has direct positive influence but, has explained the lowest variance among the three factors. Thus, it is recommended that efforts should focus on translating this intention into actual business startup. In this case, various supports such as training, entrepreneurial experience sharing and access to resources by government and nongovernment agencies could be helpful.