Exploring the Relationships Among Individual Traits, Higher Education, and Entrepreneurial Intentions

• Main Authors: Nurul Indawati, 印美光
• Other Authors: David Y. Chang
• Format: Others
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/14481441809196577777

碩士 === 國立嘉義大學 === 全英文授課觀光暨管理碩士學位學程 === 102 === ABSTRACT The entrepreneurial activities have a great impact on economy. Bosma et. al., (2008) stated that entrepreneurship has found to contribute to economic growth and development in general, and specially in higher income countries. Because of today’s global economic crises and rapid technological advances, as pointed out by Collins et al. (2004), for twenty-first century graduates, university education is no longer a passport to employment. Since large corporations have started to employ fewer people, there is increasing demand for entrepreneurial graduates. Accordingly, this study examines the factors that influence entrepreneurial intentions. The large body of entrepreneurship literature examines the factors of entrepreneurial intentions influence. Previous research suggested that among other factors, individual’s personality traits influence their intentions to start a business (Mueller &; Thomas, 2001). Several previous studies showed that individual traits have four main dimensions: need for achievement, internal locus of control, innovativeness, and risk taking (Ertuna &; Eda Gurel, 2011; Koh, 1996). The students of higher education selected to be participants. This study attempted to examine how individual characteristics can affect the student's intention to entrepreneurship. In addition, this study also includes higher education as a moderating variable that affects the relationship between individual traits and entrepeneurial intentions. A sample population was obtained through twitter and email. A total of 348 responses were usable. The statistical program called AMOS 20 (Analysis of Moment Structures) was used to conduct the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Other statistical techniques such as t-test and descriptive analysis were conducted using SPSS 18. The finding indicated that there was a statistically significant relationship between individual traits and entrepreneurial intentions (H1). Similar with the previous finding, the relationship between higher education and entrepreneurial intentions was also significant (H3). And the last, the study findings also indicated that higher education moderates the relationship between individual traits and entrepreneurial intentions (H2). Based on the empirical research findings, the researcher states that in addition to conveying knowledge of the start-up process, educational offerings have to be designed in a way to especially encourage the personality traits including need for achievement, locus of control, innovativeness and risk-taking propensity, since these traits can be regarded as essential factors influencing the development and realization of start-up ideas.