This study assesses whether final-year undergraduate students at Sana’a University, Yemen intend to start their own business. The study employs the theory of planned behaviour and two environmental factors to explore whether the theory’s behavioural factors and the contextual factors of Lüthje & Franke’s model have an impact on students’ intentions to start their own business. A questionnaire survey with a random sample of 335 final-year university students from the largest public university in Yemen has been conducted. Data has been analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation and structural equation modelling. The findings indicate that students’ perceptions of entrepreneurship have a strong, direct impact on self-employment intention, excluding social norms and entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Students’ self-employment intention is directly affected by perceived barriers and support factors in the entrepreneurship-related context. To increase their entrepreneurial abilities, university students require more training and education to be able to start new businesses. Developing entrepreneurial skills among citizens may improve the societal norms of business. The outcomes provide significant implications for policymakers, academic communities and international bodies.

While entrepreneurship is believed to play a crucial role in economic growth and job creation in various parts of the world, particularly in developed countries, the key factors enhancing entrepreneurship behavior and intention in developing countries still need to be discovered. Therefore, this study examines the influence of personality traits and environmental and situational factors on the development of entrepreneurial intention among young students in Yemen. Data were collected through a survey responded to by 487 final-year university students from two universities (public and private) in Yemen. The study’s hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). The study reveals that personality traits of the need for achievement (nAch) and locus of control (LoC) positively correlate with entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) and entrepreneurial intention. Instrumental readiness positively correlates with ESE but not with entrepreneurial intent. The situational factors show a positive association with entrepreneurial intention but not ESE and a positive relationship between ESE and entrepreneurial intention. Furthermore, the study’s findings show that ESE partially mediates the relationship between the nAch, LoC, instrumental readiness, and entrepreneurial intention. However, ESE did not mediate the relationship between situational factors and entrepreneurial intention. The study suggests that situational factors can influence entrepreneurial intention among Yemeni students and provide several recommendations to academicians and policymakers.

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