Business Environment, Attitudes and Entrepreneurial Intentions as Antecedents of Entrepreneurial Inclination among University Students

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education has become increasingly relevant. For some years now, the business environment for starting a new company in the Dominican Republic has been considered very propitious. This has caused many universities to incorporate training in entrepreneurship into their study plans. This study aims to analyse whether the cognitive and affective components, the country’s business environment, university training in entrepreneurship and attitudes towards entrepreneurship are antecedents of the entrepreneurial intention of university students. It also seeks to investigate the relationship between entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial behaviour of students. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire from a sample of 523 students who had taken courses on entrepreneurship. The data have been analysed through the SPSS and Smart-PLS programs. The results of this research highlight the importance of the affective component and attitudes towards entrepreneurship in the formation of students’ entrepreneurial intentions. This reinforces the importance of cultivating positive attitudes through educational interventions. It is also worth noting the influence of students’ entrepreneurial intentions on entrepreneurial inclinations. Finally, it is worth highlighting the high predictive power of the entrepreneurial intentions variable and more specifically the attitudes towards entrepreneurship variable as responsible for 35.38% of the variability of entrepreneurial intentions. These results contribute to the understanding of the factors that drive entrepreneurial intentions among university students and provide a foundation for future research.