Do entrepreneurial characteristics and education influence start-up potentials among undergraduates? Evidence from a developing country

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education offers plausible policy options to curtail the consistent rise in youth unemployment in Nigeria. Understanding students' entrepreneurial characteristics will assist university administrators, policymakers, scholars and practitioners to deliver contents that stimulate their entrepreneurial propensity. This study examines students' entrepreneurial characteristics and how it, together with entrepreneurship education, shapes start-up potential among them in Nigeria. Research Design & Methods:The study adapts the personal entrepreneurial characteristics (PECs) scale developed by Management Systems International. Data were collected from three thousand two hundred and seventy-seven (N=3 277) students from six Nigerian universities. Descriptive and binary logistic regressions were used to estimate important PECs that influenced entrepreneurial interest among the students. Findings: The results show that majority of the students (92%) are interested in starting a business, while 36% of them are already running one form of enterprise. The level of entrepreneurship interest is also high. Generally, the mean/average score for the entire personal entrepreneurial characteristics is high, and specific means were computed for each element of PECs including opportunity seeking, risk-taking, information seeking, systematic planning and monitoring, persuasion and networking, commitment, persistence, demand for efficiency and quality, goal-setting and self-confidence. Binary logistic regression was adopted to examine the influence of PECs on the start-up potentials among the students using the mean scores computed from the PECs as the independent variables. The results show that students with high goal-setting characteristics and opportunity recognition characteristics are highly predisposed to entrepreneurship. The results further showed that students whose parents run businesses and attended entrepreneurship courses are significantly and highly likely to venture into business. Although persuasion and networking, risk-taking and persistence predispose the students to entrepreneurship, the variables were not significant. Implications & Recommendations: Entrepreneurship education in the country should therefore be re-designed such that students are adequately profiled to determine the kind of EE best suited for them. For those already practising entrepreneurship, the university administration could establish innovation hubs or labs, as well as business incubators, and organise annual innovation competition to help improve entrepreneurship education outcomes. Contribution & Value Added: The paper adopts personal entrepreneurial characteristics (PECs) as novel lenses to understand entrepreneurial inclinations among undergraduates in a developing country. Paying particular attention to PEC is important for policymakers and university administrators to improve the policy outcomes of entrepreneurship education policy. Article type:research article

Social support and risk-taking propensity as predictors of entrepreneurial intention among undergraduates in Nigeria

“…The results in Olofinyehun et al (2022) also suggest that family support influences the intention to become an entrepreneur among students. In Ezeh et al (2020) and Adelowo et al (2021aAdelowo et al ( , 2021b educational support and perceived behavioural control were found to be significant predators of entrepreneurship among students within the two different contexts.…”

“…In fact, entrepreneurship has been argued to promote rapid economic growth as well as reduce the rate of unemployment (Ogunlana, 2018;Siyanbola, 2019;Adelowo et al, 2021b;Ezeh et al, 2020). Unemployment is a major problem in Nigeria (Adelowo et al, 2021b). To paint the picture of unemployment in the country more starkly, Figure 1 shows a consistent increase in the rate of unemployment even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.…”

“…The current figure shows that over 33% of Nigerians are unemployed (Statista, 2022). The more worrisome situation is the huge number of youth who are without a job, creating a breeding ground for social vices such as kidnapping, banditry, internet frauds and insurgence (Ezeh et al, 2020;Adelowo et al, 2021aAdelowo et al, , 2021b. Nigerian population structure has shown that the Unemployment rate in Nigeria in selected quarters between the first quarter of 2015 and the fourth quarter of 2020 APJIE country has the largest youth population in the world with a median age of 18.1 years while about 70% of the population are actually under 30 years of age (Akinyemi and Mobalaji, 2022).…”

“…Recent study, through the collaborative effort of Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency [1] (SMEDAN) and National Bureau of Statistics [2] (NBS), has demonstrated that micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) contribute to employment and gross domestic product more than any other sector of the economy (SMEDAN-NBS, 2019). In fact, entrepreneurship has been argued to promote rapid economic growth as well as reduce the rate of unemployment (Ogunlana, 2018;Siyanbola, 2019;Adelowo et al, 2021b;Ezeh et al, 2020). Unemployment is a major problem in Nigeria (Adelowo et al, 2021b).…”

“…Although the contents and the curriculum delivery system are crucial for entrepreneurship education to deliver on its objectives, students' entrepreneurial intention is also a key component that has to be cultivated and supported as well. The entrepreneurship education was introduced to grow a critical mass of entrepreneurs among undergrads such that they become job creators rather than job seekers after graduation (Wu and Wu, 2008;Adelowo et al, 2021aAdelowo et al, , 2021b.…”