Demographic factors, family background and prior self-employment on entrepreneurial intention - Vietnamese business students are different: why?
Summary (3 min read)
Introduction
- Results evidence somewhat higher entrepreneurial intention in male students.
- Age and education levels show practically no impact.
- Vietnamese graduates struggle to look for jobs and business start-ups and selfemployment are seen as a strategic solution not only to create jobs for young people but also contribute significantly to the country’s socio-economic development.
Entrepreneurial intention
- Entrepreneurial intention has been defined by many different scholars worldwide.
- Pihie et al. (2009) states intention as a state of mind or attitude which influences entrepreneurial behavior.
- Perceived feasibility is defined as the degree to which people consider themselves personally able to carry out certain behavior.
- A person’s attitude towards behavior represents evaluation of the behavior and its outcome.
- Attitude towards entrepreneurship refers to the personal desirability in becoming an entrepreneur (Kolvereid, 1996).
Gender
- Entrepreneurial intention are associated with socio-demographic variables such as age, gender, education background, prior employment experience, level of education and the role models.
- Other studies also argued that females are less likely to establish their own business than men (Phan et al., 2002a, b).
- The paper explores perceived feasibility and desirability for students in 10 countries.
- Since the impact of gender on entrepreneurship remains largely inconclusive, it proposes further research in the area.
- Therefore, the first hypothesis of this study are proposed as: H1.
Age
- Some researchers believe that people mostly decide to establish their own firms between the ages of 25 to 34 (Choo and Wong, 2006; Delmar and Davidsson, 2000).
- 2001; Weber and Schaper, 2004) but they are much less likely as younger people to take steps toward acting entrepreneurially (Hart et al., 2004) or to actually establish a company (Kautonen, 2008).
- It can thus be assumed that age has a negative relation with entrepreneurial intention.
- Thus, the second hypothesis of this study is proposed as: H2.
- There is a significant difference between age ranges on entrepreneurial intention of business students.
Education level
- Van der Sluis et al. (2004) shows that the effect of general education, measured in years of schooling, on entrepreneur performance is positive (Van der Sluis et al., 2004).
- Some other studies show that the educational background plays a vital role on creating entrepreneurial skills (Murphy, 2006).
- The relationship between university education in general and entrepreneurship is not so strong and contested (Galloway and Brown, 2002; Pittaway and Cope, 2007).
- This finding is consistent with Davidsson and Honig (2003), where they show that while education can help a person discover new opportunities, it does not necessarily determine whether he or she will create a new business to exploit the opportunity.
- Quan (2012) confirms that advanced educational background has a positive impact on one’s impulsive entrepreneurship intention and one’s deliberate entrepreneurship intention.
Prior exposure to self-employment
- Barringer et al. (2005) believes that the involvement in the establishment of different firms will provide the entrepreneur the opportunity of knowing the risks and problems associated with new venture formation.
- This type of experience is also expected to have a positive impact on entrepreneurial intentions (Phan et al., 2002a, b; Tkachev and Kolvereid, 1999).
- Students’ perceived desirability of self-employment will influence self-employment intentions.
- Therefore, the nature of jobs that an individual has taken may influence his/her entrepreneurial intention.
- Therefore, the fourth hypothesis of this study is proposed as: H4.
Parent’s employment and family background
- Role modeling refers to learning by examples rather direct experience.
- In role modeling, the individual adopts the behavior by informal and unintentional observation (Tkachev and Kolvereid, 1999).
- Crant (1996) confirms that being raised in a family that is entrepreneurial significantly impacts individuals’ intentions to start their own businesses).
- Other studies also confirm that the children of entrepreneurs learn the factors involving in running a business and consider establishing a new organization as a natural career choice option (Cooper et al., 1994; Sandberg and Hofer, 1987).
- McElwee and Al-Riyami (2003) also states that children who grew up with entrepreneur parents had a greater tendency to choose a self-employed career.
Data collection process
- The respondents of this study are undergraduate and post-graduate business students from three universities located in Ho Chi Minh city which is the biggest economic center of Viet Nam.
- These are business students come from Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh city, FPT University and Nguyen Tat Than University.
- Data was collected through the use of self-administered questionnaire in a survey.
- Data collected is strictly committed for the only use of this research and the confidentiality of students is guaranteed.
- The questionnaires were written both in English and Vietnamese in order to avoid any misunderstandings.
Research instruments
- The questionnaire in this research consists of nine questions.
- Question 5 and 6 asked respondents about their family background.
- The similar research setting on entrepreneurial intention have been done by Zhao et al. (2005) and Wu (2009) in which entrepreneurial intention was measured using seven point Likert scale ranging from “1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree”.
- The average index of three questions is used for statistical analysis to test hypothesis in this study.
- Data analysis for this study include descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation), Oneway ANOVA and Independent Sample T-test.
Results and discussion
- Overall, 400 samples were collected but only 372 samples were answered fully and correctly.
- Unfortunately, 28 samples are omitted data so they must be removed.
- The coefficient alpha for the measures of entrepreneurial intention was 0.881, which indicated a very high reliability.
Gender and entrepreneurial intention
- Table 1 shows the results of gender and the entrepreneurial intention of business students.
- The T-test (sig. 0.003) indicates that there is a significant difference in the mean scores of the two sets of respondents.
- This finding also reflects a reality that women is less likely to become entrepreneurs than men in Viet Nam.
- Therefore, Vietnamese government should actively encourage and support women to start-up their business.
Age range and entrepreneurial intention
- The Table 2 shows the results of one-way ANOVA analysis between age ranges and entrepreneurial intention.
- There is no significant difference between the variances.
- Thus, the result from ANOVA analysis can be used.
- There is no significant difference among age ranges on entrepreneurial intention.
- Therefore, this result calls for further research on impact of age on entrepreneurial intention.
Conclusion and further research
- Entrepreneurship has become an important factor for economic development not only in Viet Nam but worldwide.
- Furthermore, comparative studies should be conducted to clarify the differences between Western women and Asian women on entrepreneurial intention.
- This fact calls for further research to investigate the impact of age of entrepreneurial intention.
- Remarkably, the result does not support that students with prior experience in selfemployment show higher entrepreneurial intention than students without prior experience in self-employment.
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...…& Ljunggren, 2011; Binagde, 2014; Chaudhary, 2017; Devonish et al., 2010; Fairlie & Robb, 2007; Fayolle et al., 2006; McElwee & Al-Riyami, 2003; Nguyen, 2018; Thuo et al., 2016) As far as the authors’ knowledge is concerned, no documented information about the level of entrepreneurial intent…...
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...…demographic variables such as age, gender, ethnicity, religion, academic status, prior experience, and income (Adem, 2008; Chaudhary, 2017; Daim, Dabic, & Bayraktaroglu, 2016; Fatoki, 2014; Kautonen, Tornikoski, & Kibler, 2011; Nguyen, 2018; Quan, 2012; Tegegn et al., 2016; Tewolde et al., 2016)....
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References
65,095 citations
"Demographic factors, family backgro..." refers background or methods or result in this paper
...In fact, entrepreneurial intention usually involves in psychological process, which are popularly studied by the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991)....
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...The Theory of Planned Behavior model is the most widely used model to research on entrepreneurial intention (Liñán and Chen, 2009)....
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...There are three conceptually independent determinants of intention towards entrepreneurship, namely attitudes towards entrepreneurship, subjective norms, and perceived behavior control (Ajzen, 1991). Attitude towards performing behavior refers to perceptions of personal desirability to perform the behavior (Ajzen, 1991). It depends on the expectations and beliefs about personal impacts of outcomes resulting from the behavior. A person’s attitude towards behavior represents evaluation of the behavior and its outcome. Attitude towards entrepreneurship refers to the personal desirability in becoming an entrepreneur (Kolvereid, 1996). As a result, the more expectations and beliefs towards selfemployment reflect a favorable attitude towards entrepreneurship. Financial security was the most outstanding variable that made up for the attitude towards entrepreneurial intention (Van Gelderen et al., 2008). Many studies confirm a positive relationship between attitude and behavioral intention (Kolvereid, 1996; Krueger et al., 2000; Autio et al., 2001; Van Gelderen et al., 2008; Bodewes, 2010; Tegtmeier, 2012; Yang, 2013; Nguyen, 2015). Yang (2013) confirms that attitude represented the most effective predictor of entrepreneurial intention. In contrast, Zhang et al. (2015) confirms a surprise result from a study conducted in United States that attitude fails to generate a significant impact on entrepreneurial intention....
[...]
...There are three conceptually independent determinants of intention towards entrepreneurship, namely attitudes towards entrepreneurship, subjective norms, and perceived behavior control (Ajzen, 1991). Attitude towards performing behavior refers to perceptions of personal desirability to perform the behavior (Ajzen, 1991). It depends on the expectations and beliefs about personal impacts of outcomes resulting from the behavior. A person’s attitude towards behavior represents evaluation of the behavior and its outcome. Attitude towards entrepreneurship refers to the personal desirability in becoming an entrepreneur (Kolvereid, 1996). As a result, the more expectations and beliefs towards selfemployment reflect a favorable attitude towards entrepreneurship. Financial security was the most outstanding variable that made up for the attitude towards entrepreneurial intention (Van Gelderen et al., 2008). Many studies confirm a positive relationship between attitude and behavioral intention (Kolvereid, 1996; Krueger et al., 2000; Autio et al., 2001; Van Gelderen et al., 2008; Bodewes, 2010; Tegtmeier, 2012; Yang, 2013; Nguyen, 2015). Yang (2013) confirms that attitude represented the most effective predictor of entrepreneurial intention. In contrast, Zhang et al. (2015) confirms a surprise result from a study conducted in United States that attitude fails to generate a significant impact on entrepreneurial intention. In addition, Nguyen (2017) confirms that subjective norms fails to generate significant impact on entrepreneurial intention in a research conducted in Viet Nam. Nguyen Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research (2018) 8:10 Page 3 of 17...
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...There are three conceptually independent determinants of intention towards entrepreneurship, namely attitudes towards entrepreneurship, subjective norms, and perceived behavior control (Ajzen, 1991)....
[...]
4,632 citations
"Demographic factors, family backgro..." refers background in this paper
...Many studies confirm a positive relationship between attitude and behavioral intention (Kolvereid, 1996; Krueger et al., 2000; Autio et al., 2001; Van Gelderen et al., 2008; Bodewes, 2010; Tegtmeier, 2012; Yang, 2013; Nguyen, 2015)....
[...]
...In a later study, Krueger et al. (2000) modifies the model with two more components which are specific desirability and perceived self-efficacy....
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4,281 citations
"Demographic factors, family backgro..." refers background or result in this paper
...Entrepreneurial behavior is a process that unfolds over time for the individual (Shane, 2000)....
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...…finding is inconsistent with many previous studies which confirm a positive relationship between prior experience in self-employment and entrepreneurial intention (Tkachev and Kolvereid, 1999; Lee and Tsang, 2001; Phan et al., 2002a, b; Barringer et al., 2005; Basu and Virick, 2008; Shane, 2000)....
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...Shane (2000) points out that prior knowledge about markets, customer problems, and knowledge about how to serve markets will influence individuals’ discovery of opportunities, thus influencing entrepreneurial behaviors....
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3,777 citations
2,630 citations
"Demographic factors, family backgro..." refers background in this paper
...Entrepreneurial intentions can generally be defined as a conscious awareness and conviction by an individual that set up a new business venture and plans to do so in the future (Bird, 1988; Thompson, 2009). Pihie et al. (2009) states intention as a state of mind or attitude which influences entrepreneurial behavior. Van Gelderen (2008) states that entrepreneurial intentions Nguyen Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research (2018) 8:10 Page 2 of 17...
[...]
...Entrepreneurial intentions can generally be defined as a conscious awareness and conviction by an individual that set up a new business venture and plans to do so in the future (Bird, 1988; Thompson, 2009). Pihie et al. (2009) states intention as a state of mind or attitude which influences entrepreneurial behavior....
[...]
..., 2004; Murphy, 2006; Birdthistle, 2008). In contrast, other studies argue that the relationship between university education in general and entrepreneurship is not so strong and contested (Galloway and Brown, 2002; Pittaway and Cope, 2007). Hence, the influence of education level on entrepreneurial intention still remains doubtful so it calls for further research in the field. This result also implies that government and higher education institutions should provide entrepreneurial supporting programs to any person who wish to start up rather than only base on their education level. Entrepreneurship should be nurtured in any educational environment; not necessarily only in formal education such as universities or colleges. Remarkably, the result does not support that students with prior experience in selfemployment show higher entrepreneurial intention than students without prior experience in self-employment. This finding is inconsistent with many previous studies which confirm a positive relationship between prior experience in self-employment and entrepreneurial intention (Tkachev and Kolvereid, 1999; Lee and Tsang, 2001; Phan et al., 2002a, b; Barringer et al., 2005; Basu and Virick, 2008; Shane, 2000). This finding calls for further research to assess the influences of prior experience in self-employment on entrepreneurial intention. Further studies should clarify how would positive experiences and negative positive experiences affect entrepreneurial intention of business students. Moreover, what are the context that build such entrepreneurial experience also need to be investigated. Therefore, further studies should utilize qualitative methodology to gain more in-depth findings not only for prior experience in self-employment but also for other determinants as well. In term of family background, the results do not support any relationship between family background and entrepreneurial intentions of business students. There is insufficient statistical evidence to conclude that children of self-employed parents show a higher entrepreneurial intention than children whose parents are not self-employed. The result also does not support that children of immigrant parents from rural areas to urban cities show a higher entrepreneurial intention than students whose parents are not immigrant. These results imply that family backgrounds do not have significant influence on entrepreneurial intention although the relationship between role models and entrepreneurship has been confirmed by many studies worldwide (Birley and Westhead, 1994; Crant, 1996; Tkachev and Kolvereid, 1999; McElwee and Al-Riyami, 2003, Fairlie and Robb, 2007; Nguyen Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research (2018) 8:10 Page 13 of 17...
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...Entrepreneurial intentions can generally be defined as a conscious awareness and conviction by an individual that set up a new business venture and plans to do so in the future (Bird, 1988; Thompson, 2009)....
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Frequently Asked Questions (4)
Q2. What other factors should be studied to assess the impact of age on entrepreneurial intention of business students?
many other factors that associate with time such as social network, financial capital, in-depth working experience, labor structure changes also should be studied to assess the impacts of those factors on entrepreneurial intention of business students over time.
Q3. What is the role of mentors in establishing the entrepreneurial feasibility level?
The presence of role models, mentors or partners would be a decisive element in establishing the individual’s entrepreneurial feasibility level.
Q4. What is the effect of education on entrepreneurship?
Franke and Lüthje (2004) found that students who assess the university environment as being insufficient or negative to encourage the entrepreneurship have significantly lower entrepreneurial intentions than those who have positive perceptions.