Students' Perceptions of Factors Influencing Entrepreneurial Intention at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is an important aspect for the social and economic growth of a nation as well as for personal growth of individuals. Precise prediction of future entrepreneurial behaviour of individuals can be carried out by studying their entrepreneurial intentions. Saudi Arabia, with the aim of reducing its over-reliance on the petroleum industry and to reduce the rate of unemployment in the country, identified entrepreneurial education of youngsters to be the ideal solution. Therefore, the universities of Saudi Arabia introduced diverse entrepreneurship courses for assisting the students in gaining high-end knowledge on entrepreneurship and advantageous positions in the corporate world. However, the willingness of individuals as well as their capacity to begin, manage and organize a new business venture depends on a range of factors such as their personal attributes, cognitive abilities, etc. The present paper studies four such factors, namely, psychological, social, academic and family factors influencing entrepreneurial intentions of students and also investigates the differences in student perceptions of these factors based on their demographic profile. The study focused on students from the King Saud University, selected respondents using convenience sampling and collected quantitative data from 150 respondents using questionnaires. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS package and practical implications discussed in the end.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial intentions, students, Saudi Arabia.