Abstract:
The entrepreneurship is considered as a key to the ever growing problem of unemployment, especially in developing countries. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of entrepreneurial motivation on self-employment intention. Entrepreneurship is the second or the last choice of employability among younger people in Sri Lanka. Contemporary researches have highlighted that the skills of Sri Lankan graduates are not suited to industrial requirements, and it is imperative to analyze the lacking part of entrepreneurial motivation. This study is limited to Jaffna and Trincomalee ATIs with a sample of 270 students. 10% of the population from each institute was selected using the stratified proportionate sampling method. To achieve the objective of the study, a quantitative approach was used, and data was collected through a structured questionnaire and were analyzed using reliability test, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and regression analysis. Results of this study indicated that the entrepreneurial motivation has a significant influence on selfemployment intention by 48.7%. Results also confirmed that the self-employment intention of male and female are significantly different at 5% significant level and average self-employment intention of male is higher than the average intention of female. Further, the intention of seeking a job in government and private sectors is significantly different at 5% significant level and average intention of seeking a job in private sector is higher than seeking a job in government sector. This study concluded that the motivation towards self-employment will encourage and stimulate the students to step into entrepreneurial zone rather than searching for alternatives.
