ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTION AND ITS ANTECEDENTS AMONG STATE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

This study explored different influencing factors of entrepreneurial intentions amongst undergraduates in Sri Lankan state universities. This exploratory empirical research wanted to examine the university students’ intention to set up a brand-new enterprise in the Sri Lankan context. The online survey was performed by sending the pretested survey link to the state universities’ students (agriculture and related courses) using a non-listed-based random sampling and snow bowling method. Data were gathered from 292 final year students from various state universities in Sri Lanka. The established items from the literature were applied to determine the personal attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control. The findings revealed that male students have higher entrepreneurial intentions compared to female students. All the items were used to perform the factor analysis. As predicted, three factors such as personal attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control emerged by removing two items in the personal attitude measurement scales. The final fitted structural equation model is positively significant for subjective norm and gender.