Examining the effects of demographic, social and environmental factors on entrepreneurial intention Examining the factors

Purpose – Creating employment for all seems to be impossible in emerging nations as the unemployment rate is risingfasterthanthenumberofjobopeningsavailable.Studiesontheotherhandshowthatcreatingjobsissimpleiftherightresourcesandopportunitiesaremadeavailable.ThepresentstudyaimstoexaminetheeffectsofvariousdemographicsocialandenvironmentalfactorsontheentrepreneurialintentionofengineeringundergraduatesinChhattisgarhstate. Design/methodology/approach – Correlationalresearchdesignwasincorporatedinthepresentstudy.The author applied stratified random sampling to collect samples of 1,000 engineering undergraduates enrolled in their third and fourth years in different technical colleges/universities in Chhattisgarh state. Structural equation modelling and confirmatory factor analysis were applied to analyse the data. Findings – Theresultsrevealedthatdemographic,socialandenvironmentalfactorsgreatlyinfluencedengineering undergraduates ’ entrepreneurial intention. However, age and occupation do not predict their self-employment intention. Originality/value – The present research itself is a novel study, especially in Chhattisgarh state, where the area of examining the effects of demographic, social and environmental factors on entrepreneurial intention among technical undergraduates has been limitedly explored.


Introduction
Emerging nations like India, where a greater number of graduates are produced but less opportunities are available, unemployment has risen to become one of the most serious concerns in the country. As stated by Pandey (2019), the unemployment rate in India has climbed around 1.9 times since 2014, reaching 7.6% in April 2019, which is the highest rate in the past two years. This is based on data from the State of India's Environment (SoE) 2019 report. The unemployment rate in rural regions has also hit a record high of 7.61%, which is the highest in the country. The National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) has announced the results of its periodic labour force survey for 2017-2018, which shows that the unemployment rate has increased with the education level of youths. Bhagchandani (2017) has reported that talented and skilled youth and graduates are the ever-growing problems, as they are continuously searching for job instead of starting up a new business. The requirement of delivering guidance and mentorship to new and mature entrepreneurs remains unrecognised, and self-financing is hugely fragmented, isolated to a few cities and significantly low in quantum nationwide. Also, a lack of culture that is not an environment to become creative, innovative and entrepreneurial leads to stopping India from becoming the most prominent start-up ecosystem hub. Chaudhary (2018) mentioned that science and technology could contribute significantly to India's economic growth and development. As the former president, Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam strongly believed that science and technology inventions could pave India's way. He also emphasised the idea to encourage the young ignited minds of India to achieve their goals.
There are several studies in the literature showing the effects on self-employment intention or entrepreneurial intention, but demographic, social and environmental factors should be considered underpinning variables in determining entrepreneurial behaviour among nascent entrepreneurs. Wu and Li (2011) researched the influencing factors towards the formation of entrepreneurial intention via studying an individual's cognitive process and found that perceived benefits of entrepreneurship have a significant influence on the perceived value of entrepreneurship. Turker and Selcuk (2009), in their study on university students in Turkey, identified two significant factors (perceived educational support and perceived structural support) affecting the intentions of the university students. Bhandari (2006) researched university students' entrepreneurial intention in India and found six factors: lead other people, put innovative ideas into practice, be my boss, determination, personal challenge and nonbusiness education as imperative factors for starting a new business.
There are various demographic elements that influence a person's choice to pursue a career as a professional entrepreneur (Ashley-Cotleur and Solomon, 2009). Few studies have looked at the role of demographic variables in developing students' entrepreneurial inclinations and those that have done so have found mixed results (Wang and Wong, 2004). In addition, the results are not in agreement with one another. It is still unclear whether or not demographic or personal variables have a significant impact on the establishment of entrepreneurial intentions. In addition, individuals' intentions to pursue an entrepreneurial career are influenced by a variety of social variables, which may either encourage or hinder them. Individuals' life professions, whether they are in entrepreneurship or salaried employment, are influenced by a variety of factors, including their family history, education, prior job experience, risk attitude, over-optimism, the inclination for independence and the norms and values of a society (Sanditov and Verspagen, 2011). Elali and Al-Yacoub (2016), on the other hand, revealed that social networks have a key impact on the development of entrepreneurial intents. The opposite is true, as revealed by Wang et al. (2010), who found that social networks had an indirect influence on the desire to start a business. As stated by Begley et al. (1997), the social condition of entrepreneurship emerges as a good predictor of entrepreneurial interest. Similarly, Lu et al. (2021) discovered that university assistance had an impact on the desire of college students to start a new enterprise. Audretsch et al. (2021) argued that the organisation of institutions helps to strengthen the entrepreneurial environment in urban areas. Other research have shown that an individual's entrepreneurial desire is influenced by educational and structural assistance (Turker and Selcuk, 2009;Su et al., 2021). According to Lee et al. (2005), each nation must give a personalised entrepreneurial education that takes into account the unique cultural circumstances of its citizens.
Thus, in order to better understand the inclination of technical graduates towards entrepreneurship in Chhattisgarh state, it becomes crucial to determine the factors that cause them to choose entrepreneurship as a career. The present study examines the effect of demographic, social and environmental factors on entrepreneurial intentions among engineering undergraduates at different technical institutions.
2. Theoretical grounding and hypotheses development 2.1 Demographic variables and self-employment intention 2.1.1 Age, gender and locality of stay. In the past, it has been suggested that demographic variables like age and gender have an influence on entrepreneurial inclination (Kristiansen and Indarti, 2004;Vamvaka et al., 2020;Gomes et al., 2021;Borges et al., 2021). In general, women have been found to have weaker entrepreneurial aspirations than their male counterparts. According to Crant (1996), males are far more likely than women to declare a goal or desire for establishing their own enterprises or to work for themselves. The study by Zhao et al. (2005) finds that women are less likely than males to be interested in starting their own business. Other studies have also shown that women are less likely than men to start their own businesses (Phan et al., 2002;OECD/The European Commission, 2019;Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2020;Nguyen, 2021).
Some research, on the other hand, found that there was no statistically significant difference between men and women when it came to their aspirations to establish enterprises (Kourilsky and Walstad, 1998;Shay and Terjensen, 2005;Wilson et al., 2007;Smith et al., 2016;Chaudhary, 2017;Ferri et al., 2018). These findings call into question previous study findings that female students performed worse on entrepreneurial aspects when compared to male students. Daim et al. (2016) also give insight into the entrepreneurial intentions of students in terms of gender and country of residence variations, as well as the entrepreneurial intentions of students overall. The research investigates whether or not students in 10 different nations believe something is feasible or desirable. The entrepreneurial position is evaluated based on its acceptability and viability for both men and women. The findings reveal that gender has an effect on entrepreneurial intention, and the manner in which it has an impact is determined by the nation from which the students are selected (Daim et al., 2016). Due to the fact that the influence of age, gender and locality of stay on entrepreneurship is still mainly inconclusive, the evidence recommend further study to be conducted in this area.
H1. Age would emerge as a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intention.
H2. Gender would emerge as a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intention.
H3. Locality of stay would emerge as a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intention.
2.1.2 Family income. Seemingly, there were very limited studies conducted examining the impact of family income on self-employment/entrepreneurial intention. Some of them (Henley, 2005;Talas et al., 2013;Nandamuri and Gowthami, 2013;Topping and Tariq, 2011;Alibaygi and Pouya, 2011;Kothari, 2013;Zeb et al., 2021) explain the positive effect of family income on self-employment intention. It means the higher the family income of students, the higher their self-employment intention would be. On the other hand, there are few other studies (Wang and Mellington, 2011) that predicted the negative effects of family income on self-employment intention. The rise in the family income loses their desire to start a new venture due to the fear of non-fulfilment and vice versa. Unexpectedly, Sharma (2014) and Alexander and Honig (2016) measured no impact on entrepreneurial intention among individuals. Thus, the findings of the effect of family income on entrepreneurial/self-employment intention are scattered which leads to further study in this area.
H4. Family income would emerge as a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intention. Pablo-Lerchundi et al. (2015) revealed that the profession carried out by parents has an impact on the entrepreneurial intents of students, with the children of entrepreneurs being more inclined to pursue an entrepreneurial career Examining the factors influencing Students EI than the children of public officials. Several studies in recent years have proved the importance of role models in the entrepreneurial process in several professional categories, such as academic entrepreneurs (Fern andez-P erez et al., 2015) and active entrepreneurs (Fern andez-P erez et al., 2015; Bosma et al., 2012;Fritsch et al., 2012). While some researchers have found no statistically significant relationship between entrepreneurial parental role models and children's decision to pursue an entrepreneurial career (Rodriguez et al., 1999;Kim et al., 2006), other studies have found a negative relationship, particularly, in situations where the family business has failed (Rodriguez et al., 1999;Kim et al., 2006;Scherer et al., 1989;Mungai and Velamuri, 2011). Nguyen (2021) found no significant relationship between family background with students' entrepreneurial intention. Hence, due to scattered findings of family occupation on the desire towards entrepreneurship among students, it leads to conduct further study in this area.

Occupation. The findings of research done by
H5. Occupation would emerge as a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intention.

Social factors and self-employment intention
Social factors (including parental role model, cultural role and family support) have been found related to self-employment/entrepreneurial intention in different studies. Levenburg and Schwarz (2008) researched to determine undergraduate students' entrepreneurial intention considering the impact of cultural, educational and environmental factors in India. They found that despite the social and cultural factors within India, numerous effort, in recent years, indicates a changed mindset of Indian youths regarding entrepreneurship who were found to show a significant interest in starting new ventures than their US counterparts. The term "role modelling" refers to the process of learning by examples rather than through direct experience. In role modelling, the person imitates the behaviour via inadvertent and informal observation (Tkachev and Kolvereid, 1999). According to Crant (1996), being raised in an entrepreneurial family has a major influence on people's intents to establish their own enterprises. Other studies have also shown that the children of entrepreneurs learn about the variables that go into operating a business and regarding starting a new organisation as a natural career choice alternative (Cooper et al., 1994;Sandberg and Hofer, 1987;Megibaru, 2014).
Business-owning parents serve as a positive role model and provide managerial expertise for their children, who will later become entrepreneurs themselves (Papadaki et al., 2002;Deaprida, 2021). According to Mcelwee and Al-Riyami (2003), children who grew up with entrepreneurial parents were more likely to pursue a profession as selfemployed person themselves as adults. In a similar vein, Fairlie and Robb (2007) discovered that entrepreneurs were more likely than non-entrepreneurs to have a selfemployed mother or father in their family. According to Alsos et al. (2011), a family business may play an important role in fostering the growth of entrepreneurship among members of the family. The most recent research by Chaudhary (2017) reveals that having a self-employed family history has a favourable link with entrepreneurial intention. Because several research studies have shown the significant role of parental role model, cultural role and family support on entrepreneurial intent, the present study suggests the following hypothesis.
H6. Social factors (including parental role model, cultural role and family support) would emerge as a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intention.

Environmental factors and self-employment intention
Entrepreneurial environment refers to the immediate surrounding factors which cover all the happenings and tends to affect entrepreneurs. The mind's propensity to take entrepreneurship as a career option is likely to be affected by the surrounding factors of the environmental concern. With the increasing role of environment or surroundings, acknowledging the role of environment in shaping an entrepreneurial career has substantially increased (Vondracek, 1990;Higgins, 2001;Savickas, 2002;Young et al., 2002). Individuals' personality traits and environmental factors affect intentions. Environmental factors often are regarded as "gap fillers" in the connection between personality traits and entrepreneurial intentions (Luthje and Franke, 2003). An entrepreneur's behaviour is affected by individuals' social environment in which they live, as regarded by the social and cultural approach (Light and Siegel, 2008). Newman et al. (2019) identified cultural and institutional environment, firm characteristics, education and training, work experience, role models or mentors and individual differences as antecedents of entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Further self-efficacy dimension affects entrepreneurial intentions and emotions. Entrepreneurial behaviour, performance and creation of venture are the resultant of entrepreneurial intention. There are reviews available in the literature suggesting that environment directly affects the process of entrepreneurial learning (Toutain et al., 2017). Environmental factors significantly influence students' entrepreneurial intentions. However, the university environment does not significantly influence intention (Sesen, 2013). Also, factors like students' proactive personality and university support environment (such as concept development support, business development support and education support) influence students' entrepreneurial intention (Mustafa et al., 2016). However, Lucky and Ibrahim (2014) found environmental factors as insignificant in predicting students' entrepreneurial intention. Hence, the current knowledge about the direct effect of environmental factors (i.e. economic resources and institutional environment) on entrepreneurial intention is still limited. Thus, the present study proposes the following hypothesis.
H7. Environmental factors (including economic resources and institutional environment) would emerge as a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intention.

Conceptual model of the present study
Based on the previous literatures studies, the authors propose the following conceptual model for the present study (see Figure 1).

Conceptual model
Examining the factors influencing Students EI 2.5 Operational definitions 2.5.1 Social factor. Social factors like a parental role model, cultural role, family support, community support, etc. are considered control variables about the influence intention of entrepreneurs (Birley, 1985;Aldrich and Zimmer, 1986;Dubini and Aldrich, 1991;Greve and Salaff, 2003). It can be described as the underpinning environment which influences directly or indirectly an individual towards entrepreneurial inclination.
2.5.2 Parental role model. As stated by Gibson (2004), "The term 'role model' draws on two prominent theoretical constructs: the concept of role and the tendency of individuals to identify with other people . . . and the concept of modeling, the psychological matching of cognitive skills and patterns of behavior between a person and an observing individual".
2.5.3 Cultural role. It is key to entrepreneurial success. It is created through the required leadership, values, beliefs, traditions, behaviours and interactions among classmates/equals/ colleagues which contribute to the emotional and relational environment (Sidekicker, 2020).
2.5.4 Family support. Family support can be of two types, i.e. emotional/rational and economic/financial, both can be considered essential resources to encourage self-employment intention, which contributes to entrepreneurial and economic growth (Shen et al., 2017).
2.5.5 Environmental factor. Environmental factors such as economic resources, lack of employment opportunities, political climate, etc. are considered control variables in the way of creating a direct impact on the entrepreneurial intention (Roure and Maidiue, 1986;Brenner et al., 1991;Kolvereid and Oibloj, 1994).
2.5.6 Institutional environment. It is composed of rules, regulations, customs and numerous norms that existed in the institution/organisation imposing to shape the recipient behaviours (Swaminathan and Wade, 2016).
2.5.7 Economic resource. Economic resources are those factors which help in producing goods or rendering services. In other words, it is the primary factor which helps an entrepreneur to create things or render services to potential customers (Chapel, 2015).
2.5.8 Entrepreneurial intention/self-employment intention. Entrepreneurial intention is the involvement in or the intention of an individual to start a business venture (Drennan et al., 2005;Souitaris et al., 2007). Entrepreneurial intention is defined as individuals' willingness to perform entrepreneurial behaviour, engage in entrepreneurial action, be self-employed or establish a new business (Dohse and Walter, 2010).

Research design and sampling
The study's primary respondents were engineering undergraduates belonging to any technical college/university/institution offering engineering programmes in Chhattisgarh state. The correlational research design was applied in this study. For collecting the data, a stratified random sampling method was incorporated. A sample of 1,000 respondents was considered for the study as shown in Table 1.

Research instrument
The present study adapted or modified the items/constructs as per the current research needs. Table 2 represents the constructs and measurement items along with its supporting literature in which social factor dimensions (i.e. parental role model, cultural role and family support), environmental factor dimensions (i.e. institutional environment and economic resources) and entrepreneurial intention/self-employment intention are displayed. After the identification and development of the measurement items, the researcher sent the questionnaire to the three subject experts to examine its content validity. A few items were modified as per the expert suggestions. After that, a pilot study was administered to check its content validity and whether the questionnaire is prepared to take participants' responses. No major changes were needed after the pilot study.

Scale validation
The present study incorporated partial least square confirmatory factor analysis for the validation of a scale. In Table 3, Cronbach's alpha (Nunnally, 1978) and Rho A value is indicated as more than 0.7 for all the variables which explain a fair measure of the reliability of the scale. For validity measure, convergent validity's value must be more than 0.7 (Hair et al., 2010;Bagozzi and Yi, 1988) and the average variance extracted (AVE) value must be greater than 0.5 for all the variables as indicated in Table 3. Thus, the results produce fair measures for reliability and validity of the scale.

Data analysis
Structural equation modelling (SEM) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were run to analyse the data.

Analysis and results
SEM was run to determine the effect of demographic factors (i.e. age, gender, locality of stay, family income and occupation), social factors (i.e. parental role model, cultural role and family support) and environmental factors (i.e. economic resource and institutional environment) on entrepreneurial intention of engineering undergraduate students of Chhattisgarh state which is as shown in Table 4 and Figure 2. The result explains that social factors predicted a positive relationship with parental role model (β 5 0.672, p < 0.001), cultural role (β 5 0.848, p < 0.001) and family support (β 5 0.756, p < 0.001). Similarly, an environmental factor also predicted a significant connection with economic resources (β 5 0.865, p < 0.001) and the institutional environment (β 5 0.795, p < 0.001). Demographic variables such as gender (β 5 À0.097, p < 0.001), locality of stay (β 5 0.06, p < 0.05) and family income (β 5 À0.08, p < 0.01) provided to be a significant predicator of entrepreneurial intention, whereas age (β 5 0.044, p > 0.05) and occupation (β 5 À0.044, p > 0.05) were found insignificant for creating self-employment intention among engineering undergraduates towards entrepreneurship. Likewise, social factor (β 5 0.49, p < 0.001) and environmental factor (β 5 0.25, p < 0.001) also contributed positively to creating self-employment intention among engineering undergraduate students.
Previous The obtained values for fit indices χ 2 /df 5 1.882, GFI 5 0.93, CFI 5 0.89, SRMR 5 0.08 and RMSEA 5 0.08 suggest an acceptable value of fit indices. Thus, the proposed model is said to have a good fit.

Parental role model
Self-structured 1 My parents encourage me to take on challenges 2 My parents run their own business, and I am willing to run my own business as well

Cultural role
Adapted from D ıaz-Casero et al. (2012)  1 In my country/region, the national culture is highly supportive of individual success achieved through own personal efforts 2 In my country/region, the national culture emphasises selfsufficiency, autonomy and personal initiative 3 In my country/region, the national culture encourages entrepreneurial risk-taking 4 In my country/region, the national culture encourages creativity and innovativeness 5 In my country/region, the national culture emphasises the responsibility that the individual (rather than the collective) has in managing his or her own life Family support Gelaidan and Abdullateef (2017) 1 If I decided to be an entrepreneur, my family members will support me 2 If I decided to be an entrepreneur, my friends will support me

Institutional environment
Modified from Schwarz et al. (2009) 1 In my institution, people are actively encouraged to pursue their own ideas 2 The courses provide students with the knowledge required to start a new company 3 There is a well-functioning support infrastructure in place to support the start-up of new firms 4 The creative atmosphere inspires us to develop ideas for new businesses 5 The education in an institution encourages me to develop creative ideas for being an entrepreneur

Economic resources
Modified from Kickul and D'Intino (2005) 1 I can develop and maintain favourable relationships with potential investors 2 I can develop a working environment that encourages people to try out something new 3 I can identify potential sources of funding for investment

Self-employment intention
Adapted from Ismail et al. (2013) 1 I will choose my career as an entrepreneur 2 I prefer to be an entrepreneur rather than to be an employee in a company 3 I am prepared to do anything to be an entrepreneur 4 I will make every effort to start and run my own business 5 I have thought seriously to start my own business after completing my study 6 I have strong intention to start my own business as soon as possible after graduation

Discussion
The results (H1-H5) of the study explained that the demographic factors such as gender, locality of stay and family income have been found to be significantly associated with entrepreneurial intention. However, family income is negatively correlated. The findings also showed no significant relationship between age and occupation on students' entrepreneurial intention (Table 5). The positive correlation between the locality of stay and entrepreneurial intention (IC 2 Institute, 2021) indicates that people who live in more developed and resourceful environments will be more inclined to entrepreneurship and vice versa. This means that engineering undergraduates are predominantly from more developed and resourceful environments, which influences them to pursue entrepreneurship as a career. As has been discovered in previous studies (Shapero and Sokol, 1982;Louw et al., 2003;Liñ an et al., 2005;Lo et al., 2012;Shinnar et al., 2012;Vamvaka et al., 2020;Gomes et al., 2021;Borges et al., 2021), gender demography has also been found to be positively associated with entrepreneurial intention. However, a negative link between family income demography and entrepreneurial intention shows that students from impoverished families have a greater tendency to start their own businesses than students from wealthy families and vice versa (Wang and Mellington, 2011).
However, results provided that there is no significant relationship between age demography and entrepreneurial intention (Nguyen, 2021) among engineering undergraduates. Previous researchers (Kristiansen and Indarti, 2004;Vamvaka et al., 2020) explain that the increase in age among people decreases their intention to pursue an entrepreneurial career. Arguably, the present study's results state that age does not matter if  Examining the factors influencing Students EI one is determined to create a new entrepreneurial venture, and it denies the fact that people/ students at younger age can only have a higher inclination to start a new venture. Similarly, no significant association was found between family occupation and entrepreneurial intention, which explains that family background/occupation also does not matter when it comes to choosing entrepreneurship as a career. Hence, there might be some other factors in play affecting their inclination towards the entrepreneurial venture.
Statistically significant results (H6) were obtained from an investigation into the impact of social factors (Birley, 1985;Aldrich and Zimmer, 1986;Dubini and Aldrich, 1991;Greve and Salaff, 2003;Megibaru, 2014;Deaprida, 2021) on students' entrepreneurial intention (H6), indicating that a positive role model as parents, a positive cultural role and family support have all play an important role in encouraging students' entrepreneurial desire. A supportive family environment for a business venture, particularly when the entrepreneur's parents are role models, fosters a positive culture around the students and encourages them to engage in productive discussions about business ventures, which in turn encourages them to be more inclined towards entrepreneurship.  The findings (H7) of the study of the influence of environmental variables, which included the institutional environment and economic resources, revealed that students' entrepreneurial intention was substantially associated with these elements. The institutional environment (in the form of institutional support facilities, a conducive atmosphere, encouragement and so on) positively stimulated undergraduates' intention to become entrepreneurs (Luthje and Franke, 2003;Kraaijenbrink et al., 2010;Newman et al., 2019). Integration of investor links, development of a working environment and identification of prospective financing sources for investment are all factors that favourably influence self-employment intentions among engineering students.

Contribution of the study
The problem of unemployment has become a major problem for all the governments, and it is expected to worsen in emerging nations, particularly India, as a result of the current Covid-19 conditions. At this point, the only option is to generate more entrepreneurs in conformity with present circumstances in order to provide employment to the country's citizens. The findings clearly show the relevance of demographic, social and environmental aspects in technical students' entrepreneurial inclination. The research demonstrates that family support, parental role model, cultural role, institutional environment and economic resources all have a significant impact on the individual's inclination to pursue entrepreneurship as a profession. When addressing such a problem or achieving the goal of producing entrepreneurs, the government and concerned authorities should take these elements into account. In addition, every year millions of technical students graduate and begin looking for work in the labour market rather than pursuing their own entrepreneurial endeavours because they do not have sufficient social and environmental elements working in their favour. But, according to the findings of the current research, technical students have the capacity to open up new channels and become successful entrepreneurs if social and environmental elements are in their favour and work to their advantage. The government and concerned authorities must implement specific policies and take specific concrete measures that take these factors into consideration, as the research shows that increasing the number of entrepreneurs has a direct influence on the decrease of unemployment.

Conclusion
Despite the fact that India has the youngest population among the world's top countries, job creation has been critical in attaining fair development. The issue is that there are not enough Hypotheses Statements Results

H1
Age would emerge as a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intention Not Confirmed H2 Gender would emerge as a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intention Confirmed H3 Locality of study would emerge as a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intention Confirmed H4 Family income would emerge as a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intention

H5
Occupation would emerge as a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intention Not Confirmed

H6
Social factors (such as parental role model, cultural role and family support) would emerge as a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intention Confirmed H7 Environmental factors (such as economic resources and institutional environment) would emerge as a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intention Confirmed Table 5.

Hypotheses outcomes
Examining the factors influencing Students EI jobs available and that graduates do not have the necessary employability skills when they join the workforce. Consequently, it becomes critical to recognise the pressing need of the hour, which is to create the proper environment in terms of social and environmental elements as well as demographic aspects in order to turn latent entrepreneurs into active ones. Studies have shown that engineering students, as opposed to students from other disciplines, are more likely to become entrepreneurs during or after their studies. The present study also explored the effect of demographic, social and environmental factors on entrepreneurial intention among engineering undergraduates of Chhattisgarh's various technical institutions. The results revealed that demographic, social and environmental factors significantly affected engineering undergraduates' entrepreneurial intention except for age and occupation variables. Hence, it can be predicted that demographic, social and environmental factors help create entrepreneurial intention among engineering students.

Limitations
In this research, cross-sectional data were collected. With longitudinal data, it would be much more beneficial to examine the changes that occurred from the beginning of their courses to the third and fourth years of their courses, experimenting with students' entrepreneurial attitudes and intentions changes that may occur/have occurred.

Avenues for future research
Future researchers should be more willing to collect longitudinal data to better understand the changes that have happened among engineering students in terms of entrepreneurial attitude and intention.