Abstract:

Individuals with a higher level of self-efficacy have more entrepreneurial intention to settle on their own, creating and managing their own career. This study aimed to know the level of entrepreneurial self-efficacy of higher education students and to verify the impact of entrepreneurial self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intention or creation of new businesses. To achieve these objectives, a cross-sectional, quantitative and analytical study was carried out based on a probabilistic sample of 2107 students from a Portuguese higher education institution located in the Northern Interior of Portugal. The margin of error was 1.84%. To collect the data, a questionnaire was directly applied to the students, in the classroom in the presence of the teacher, from October 2018 to January 2019. Students’ participation was voluntary and the anonymity and data confidentiality were guaranteed to all participants. The questionnaire had three sections. The first section included sociodemographic variables (gender, age and nationality) and academic variables (scientific area of the course, course degree, year attended, attendance mode and course with or without integrated internship). The second section included the entrepreneurial self-efficacy scale developed by De Noble, Don Jung & Sanford Ehrlich (1999). This scale consists of 23 items related to the individuals' ability to perform tasks, and the answers coded by a Likert scale ranged from 1 (totally incapable) to 7 (fully capable). Finally, the third section comprised the Simões (2016) scale consisting of four items that aimed to evaluate the entrepreneurial intention of the students. The answers were coded using a Likert scale ranging from 1 (a little) to 7 (a lot). A linear regression model was estimated in order to verify if Entrepreneurial self-efficacy (X) is a predictor of Entrepreneurial intention (Y). Students were aged between 17 and 52 years old and attended a degree course within four different scientific areas, existent in the institution, namely Education (60.5%), Technologies and Management (21.2%), Agriculture (6.3%) and Health (12.0%). The majority was female (54.0%), Portuguese (82.9%) and attended a 1st cycle degree course (88.8%) in an ordinary full-time attendance mode (96.4%). The students registered a moderate level of entrepreneurial self-efficacy. In fact, it was observed that 20.4% of the students registered a high level of entrepreneurial self-efficacy; 54.5% showed a moderate level, and, the remaining 15.1% revealed a low level of entrepreneurial self-efficacy. The estimated regression model was statistically significant. It was found that Entrepreneurial self-efficacy is a predictor of Entrepreneurial intention (creation of new businesses). Moreover, the value of Adjusted R2 shows that this predictor account for 43.9% of Entrepreneurial intention. Entrepreneurial self-efficacy contributes to the generation of ideas and the creation of new businesses with success. Therefore, higher education institutions should be able to improve students’ entrepreneurial skills.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurial self-efficacy, Businesses, Students, Higher education, Professional career.