Assessing the impact of Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia's microcredit programme on participants' quality of life

Since the inception of the microcredit programmes, various studies have been carried out to assess their impacts. Earlier studies seemed to focus on the impact of microcredit on the participants' incomes, and consequently on poverty. However, recent impact studies of microcredit programmes have looked into the participants' well-being instead of their incomes to measure their quality of life. Thus, this study attempted to investigate the impact of Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia 's microcredit programme on the participants' quality of life using a more comprehensive measure. Different from earlier research, this study took on a different perspective by examining the aspects of personal attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial behaviour in assessing the impact Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia's microcredit programme has on the participants' quality of life. In this study, the hypotheses were tested using a cross-sectional data of 638 participants of Amanah lkhtiar Malaysia (AIM). The findings of the study show that all the hypotheses are significant and supported, where there is a positive and significant influence between participants' personal attitude and entrepreneurial intention, participants' subjective norm and entrepreneurial intention, participants' perceived behavioural control and entrepreneurial intention, participants' perceived behavioural control and entrepreneurial behaviour, participants' entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial behaviour, and participants' entrepreneurial behaviour and participants' quality of life. In addition, there is a significant relationship in the mediating effect of entrepreneurial intention on participants' personal attitude and entrepreneurial behaviour, participants ' subjective norm and entrepreneurial behaviour, and participants ' perceived behavioural control and entrepreneurial behaviour. Similarly, there is a significant relationship between the mediating effect of entrepreneurial behaviour and participants entrepreneurial intention and quality of life. This study contributes to the policy implications of Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia's microcredit programme especially in improvement in training and guidance. Finally, the study also discusses the limitations of the study and the recommendations for future research.