Entrepreneurial intentions of university students in Vietnam: Integrated model of social learning, human motivation, and TPB

Abstract

Previous research has used psychological factors, personality traits, and motivation factors to determine the students' entrepreneurial intentions (EI). However, there is no study in the context of Vietnam which has integrated the social learning theory (entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE)) with the theory of planned behaviour (personal attitudes (PA), subjective norms (SN), perceived behavioural control (PBC)) and motivation theory (need for power (nPow)). The study aims to determine the integrated effect of these different theories on students' entrepreneurial intentions and in particular how self-efficacy has the mediation and serial-mediation effect on entrepreneurial intentions of students. The data for this study was collected using an online survey from 394 students studying in the undergraduate and postgraduate programs in the universities in Vietnam. The confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling are used to test the study's hypotheses. The study results emphasized that in addition to the direct effect of ESE on TPB components and nPow, ESE also has an indirect effect on EI mediated through SN, PBC, nPow, which is further mediated by PA. ESE was found to have the highest influence on PBC compared to other variables of the study, while PBC further strongly impacted the EI of students indirectly. As a main theoretical contribution, this study is an attempt to integrate different models (social learning theory, TPB components and motivation theory) of entrepreneurship into one model to find the joint effect on EI. which has been not seen in any studies so far to the best of the knowledge, especially in Vietnam. Hence, the study contributes towards adding this new model of entrepreneurship to measure the EI of students which signifies the novel contribution to the existing literature in Vietnam. Further, only a few studies have been conducted to determine the integrated effect of ESE on EI mediated by TPB components and then further mediated by PA and this has been also tested in this study.