Entrepreneurial Intention among Freshmen Students — Application of the Theory of Planned Behaviour in Saudi Context

Abstract

This research aims to investigate whether attitude towards entrepreneurship, perceived entrepreneurial self-efficacy, social norm and gender predict entrepreneurial intentions of Saudi Freshmen students. Starting from the findings of GEM report in Kelley & al. (2010), entrepreneurial intention of Saudi people was recorded as the lowest rate of 1% among 59 countries. This research focuses on studying factors explaining intentions. Based on a literature review, we use a theoretical model of intention based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991) which was tested earlier by Boissin et al. (2007a) to French context. We intend to retest it in Saudi context. We add gender as control variable and a potential predictor of intention. Then, we conduct a research survey from Autumn 2013 to Autumn 2014 of 289 Saudi (183 males and 106 females) students. The collected data was analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) through Partial Least Squares (PLS) technique. Then, results are shown and discussed, and finally, some recommendations are presented.