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Integrating and extending competing intention models to understand the entrepreneurial intention of senior university students

Riyad Eid (Department of Business Administration, College of Business and Economics, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates)
Amgad Badewi (Kent Business School, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK)
Hassan Selim (Department of Business Administration, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates)
Hatem El-Gohary (Birmingham City Business School, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK) (Department of Marketing, College of Business and Economics, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar) (Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt)

Education + Training

ISSN: 0040-0912

Article publication date: 8 February 2019

Issue publication date: 5 March 2019

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Abstract

Purpose

The growing interest in the development of entrepreneurial intention (EI) that has increased the importance of theories that explain and anticipate the tendency among individuals to start a new business. However, most of these theories focus on the relationship between entrepreneurs perceptions and their intention and ignore the cognitive and psychological characteristics that might configure their perceptions. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to integrate the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) with the entrepreneurial event model (EEM) and to extend the combined model to include the personality characteristics of an entrepreneur that might shape the perceptions and intentions.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses a sample of 688 senior university students (Emirati nationals, 91.2 per cent and expatriates, 8.8 per cent) and employs positivist research with a quantitative approach, adopting a survey strategy through questionnaires and structural equation modelling.

Findings

The results demonstrate the relevance and robustness of the suggested combined and extended model in the prediction of intention on the part of senior university students to become entrepreneurs (explained variance=73.3 per cent) based on survey data (2017; n = 688).

Originality/value

The main contribution of this paper lies not only in the integration of the TPB and the EEM, but also in extending the two theories on which it is based through adding entrepreneurial personality characteristics and an explanation of the mechanism through which entrepreneurial perceptions and EI develop.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors sincerely thank the editor and the anonymous Journal of Education + Training’s reviewers for their constructive and valuable comments and suggestions. This work was funded by UAEU Program for Advanced Research (UPAR) Grant (UPAR (5) 2014- G00001699).

Citation

Eid, R., Badewi, A., Selim, H. and El-Gohary, H. (2019), "Integrating and extending competing intention models to understand the entrepreneurial intention of senior university students", Education + Training, Vol. 61 No. 2, pp. 234-254. https://doi.org/10.1108/ET-02-2018-0030

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited

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