A Study of Antecedents on Entrepreneurial Intention Among Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) Students

It is widely accepted that entrepreneurship represents a real engine of economic development. Entrepreneurship is meeting the economic needs through the creation of new business, job opportunities, and innovations that have a large impact on the economic growth in the countries concerned. In Malaysia, entrepreneurship also found to be a significant role to prosper the economic growth by contributing to the job creation, innovation and market development. Thus, government always has always taking steps to promote the creation and development of entrepreneurs. The attention also was given by the government at tertiary level in order to encourage university students in venturing into entrepreneurship. However, to start up the entrepreneurial activity, it does not occur in a vacuum but it is influenced by intention to start up business. Accordingly it is useful to investigate the factors that determine students’ intention of becoming entrepreneurs.
This study tends to exploit theory of planned behaviour and emotional intelligence approach in order to capture the entrepreneurial intention among students in Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) after graduation. Theory of planned behaviour suggests three attitudes that determine intention which is attitudes towards behaviour, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control while emotional intelligence consists of four distinct dimensions namely Self Emotional Appraisal (SEA), Other’s Emotional Appraisal (OEA), Regulation of Emotion (ROE) and Use of Emotion (UOE).
The respondents in this study comprise of students in UUM which has been categorized into students who involve in business and students who do not involve in business. Hence, T-test and multiple regression analysis is conducted in order to examine the impact of emotional intelligence and theory of planned behaviour on the entrepreneurial intention among UUM students who involve and do not involve in business activities in campus.
Generally results of T-test revealed that there will be a difference in students’ involvement in business activities based on their attitudes towards behaviour, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, SEA, OEA as well as UOE. However, results of T-test for ROE reveal that there will be no difference between students who involve and do not involve in business on regulation of emotion (ROE). Results of multiple regression indicated that there is a relationship between students’ involvement in business, attitudes towards behaviour, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, SEA, OEA, ROE as well as UOE on entrepreneurial intention after graduation. All the components of Theory of Planned Behaviour and students’ involvement in business revealed that they are appeared to be significant antecedent to predict entrepreneurial intention among UUM students especially those students who involve in entrepreneurial activities in UUM.