A Longitudinal Study of the Entrepreneurial Intentions of University Students

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper presents a longitudinal study of entrepreneurial intentions among university students enrolled in a business administration program. Data was collected twice: first during the last semester in school and then 18 months later, once students had graduated and started to work on a full-time basis. Results confirm that the perceptions of the desirability and feasibility of launching a business significantly explain the formation of an intention to go into business on a long term horizon. However, the model does not hold as well when the time frame is shorter. Indeed, both perceptions fail to explain to a significant degree the intention to go into business. When work satisfaction is added to the model, both this variable and perception of feasibility become significant predictors of short term intentions, perception of desirability remaining non significant. Our results also tend to indicate that entrepreneurial intentions and perceptions vary over time. As the temporal stability of intention is a condition for an intention-based model to accurately predict behavior, the link between entrepreneurial intentions and actual venture creation may prove difficult to establish. Data collected in the following phase of the study should provide more information about the temporal stability of variables. INTRODUCTION If there is one question that has not been answered satisfactorily, it is that of whether it is possible to identify the people within a society who will eventually go on to start their own businesses. This question is of considerable interest. Let us imagine for a moment that it is possible to identify the individuals in a given group who have what it takes to succeed in business, or whose profile is consistent with the composite profile of the entrepreneur. Financial institutions would find it considerably easier to decide who qualifies for a loan and who does not, simply by administering a test to determine whether the applicant meets the successful criteria. Similarly, future entrepreneurs could be identified as soon as they entered the educational system, and directed towards an academy of entrepreneurship whose mission would be to provide suitable training, in the same way that the former communist countries used to recruit and train their most promising athletes. Clearly, these examples are completely unrealistic, but they nevertheless illustrate society's insatiable curiosity about new venture creation and its principal actor, the entrepreneur. Indeed, this quest for the Holy Grail has fuelled research in the field of entrepreneurship for many years. Several theoretical approaches have been developed to explain why some people eventually become entrepreneurs. Among these, a relatively new stream of research has emerged, based on entrepreneurial intentions. More specifically, the intention to start a business is thought to be the best predictor of actual venture creation, such intention being formed by perceptions of the desirability and feasibility of going into business. This research perspective looks promising as the few empirical studies that have verified the link between perceptions and intentions have yielded convincing results. However, we do not know yet how entrepreneurial perceptions and intentions evolve over time. As a significant amount of time may elapse between the moment the intention to start a business is formed and the moment the potential entrepreneur initiate activities leading to venture creation, temporal stability is crucial for the model to hold. The objective of this research is to fill this important gap, through a longitudinal study of entrepreneurial intentions and perceptions. The first part of the paper describes and discusses the theoretical approach selected for this study, namely that intention is a valid predictor of planned behavior such as starting a business. The next section situates the theoretical framework within the research context, i. …