Examining the entrepreneurial intention of university students: the role of entrepreneurial education and attitudes

Treball Final de Grau en Administració d'Empreses. Codi: AE1049. Curs 2017-2018Purpose: The main objective of this work is to study the influence the entrepreneurial intent of university students, and to observe to what extent students’ attitudes and entrepreneurial education affect their decision to start up a business. Specifically, in this work, the role of education in entrepreneurship and certain socio-demographic aspects such as work experience, gender and training specialty will be analysed, exploring how they influence entrepreneurial intent. In the study of entrepreneurial intent, we will analyse three attitudinal backgrounds, such as the attitude of the person with respect to starting a business, subjective norms and the perceived behavioural control. Design/Methodology: To answer the three research questions posed, we developed a questionnaire aimed at students of the Jaume I University. This study has an exploratory nature, so we selected a sample of levels of two training fields, together with a control group formed by the participants of the Explorer Program of the Santander Bank Entrepreneurship. Findings: The results reveal that the most influential backgrounds in the entrepreneurial intention of the students are the personal attitudes and the perceived behavioural control with respect to entrepreneurship. We also found that education in entrepreneurship is associated with high levels of personal attitude, behavioural control and the intention to launch a business. Finally, the results indicate that students with work experience have higher levels of entrepreneurial intention. It is also observed that the training specialty influences the entrepreneurial intent, and, in contrast, gender does not seem to influence the intention to start up a business