Entrepreneurial Intentions: A Study on Students from Countryside University

Abstract

This study aims at evaluating the outlook of the students, who are studying at a countryside institution in a developing country, towards entrepreneurship by applying the theory of planned behavior. Taking into account the lack of employment opportunities in rural areas in developing economies, and the scarcity of literature on students’ self-employment intentions there; we find this study timely. The results show that there is positive outlook of the respondents toward self-employment, and the theory of planned behavior explains a significant portion of the variance in their entrepreneurial intention. Attitude toward the entrepreneurship being the significant predictor, followed by perceived behavioral control and subjective norm. This study contributes to the literature by filling the scarcity on the application of the theory of planned behavior on learners from rural institution; and thereby validates the generalizability of the theory. It also offers some important policy measures to the policy makers at government level.