Determinants of entrepreneurial intentions

The growing body of literature is arguing that entrepreneurial intentions play a significant role in the decision-making process of becoming an entrepreneur. Bolstering the entrepreneurial and innovation-oriented mindsets, primarily among younger generations, might be considered crucial for the successful economic and social evolvement. Detecting the appropriate reasons which induce youngsters, especially students, to become entrepreneurs is a potentially valuable input for different policymakers and a problem explored in this paper. Personal attitudes, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control are called motivational ‘antecedents’ of entrepreneurial intentions and has been thoroughly studied within the theory of planned behaviour, developed by Ajzen (1991). The applicability of Ajzen’s model for predicting the main antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions were successfully tested in this study among students with or without international studying experience, as well as distinctions considering several background (individual and social) factors. The results of the correlation and regression analysis pointed out that personal attitudes towards entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ability represent the most relevant components of the theory of planned behaviour model, while subjective norms have a minor role. Statistically significant differences were found in six factors: age, family background, household incomes, profession, country of origin, and student exchange programmes. These results confirmed previous conclusions about the explanation power of Ajzen’s model to predict entrepreneurial intentions and brought empirical evidence about studying abroad experience which has a noticeable impact on predictors of entrepreneurial intention among students, which potentially deserves additional incentives from policymakers and higher education institutions.