Social Entrepreneurship Intention Among Universiti Utara Malaysia Students

Social entrepreneurship is an important social phenomenon in many countries and is considered as an effective method to improve and develop economics of countries. It is also a solution to the unemployment problem that promotes regional development and economic growth and innovation. The Malaysian government has undertaken several initiatives to encourage social entrepreneurship to set up businesses in the country. Social entrepreneurship not only looks for the new opportunities in the market to serve society, but also undertakes in learning, adaptation, and innovation continuously. The purpose of this study is to identify the social entrepreneurship intention among Universiti Utara Malaysia students. The study was implemented to determine the
relationship between social support, university experience and empathy in social entrepreneurship intention. The survey was conducted with 382 students who completed a structured questionnaire. Samples were selected using stratified sampling and simple random sampling and the respondents answered the questionnaire via Google form. The questionnaire was divided into fixed sections which include demographic factors, social entrepreneurship intentions, social support, university experience and empathy. Data analysis methods used in this research were Descriptive Analysis, Reliability Analysis, Pearson Correlation Analysis and Multiple Regression Analysis. According to the analysis, respondents have a high social entrepreneurship intention. This study concluded that only university experience and empathy have a significant relationship with the intentions of
university students to become social entrepreneurship. The findings of this study will be highly benefit that can be value to students, NGOs and the government are able to understand the factors
influencing students’ intention to become a social entrepreneurship. In addition, it will also help the Malaysia Higher Education Institutions to encourage and organize more social entrepreneurship activities among students in developing and producing more graduates that have high intentions to become a social entrepreneurship.