Entrepreneurial Motivation in University Business Students: A Latent Profile Analysis based on Self-determination Theory

Abstract

The development of entrepreneurship education (EE) has become a top priority for many universities around the world. Accordingly, the objectives of this paper are to identify motivation profiles of university business students, to determine how profile membership predicts students’ entrepreneurial intention and interest to study entrepreneurship, and to identify predictors of membership in these motivation profiles. To achieve these objectives, our method entails the application of self-determination theory (SDT) in a person-centered analysis. Our study is, in fact, the first application of the full range of motivations from SDT to define students’ entrepreneurial motivations; furthermore, we use latent profile analysis to identify groups of students that can be distinguished according to these motivations. We discover four groups of students: 1) uniformly lowly motivated, 2) indifferent, 3) conflicted, and 4) uniformly highly and intrinsically motivated. We find that students in these groups differ with regard to their interest to study entrepreneurship and their intention to be entrepreneurs. We also identify psychological traits and background factors that could explain the group membership. We discuss the implications of these findings on the promotion and delivery of EE, and on how students may be motivated to become entrepreneurs.

Factors Influencing the Teaching Intention of Business College Teachers to Fulfill Digital Entrepreneurship Courses

“…From the perspective of the SDT model, when teachers’ sense of autonomy, problem solving ability, and their sense of relatedness are enhanced, teachers will be positively motivated by some psychological mechanism to enhance their exposure to DEE and their acceptance of DEE-related courses. This shows that autonomy, relatedness, and problem solving ability can strengthen teachers’ personal positive emotions, encourage them to work on innovation, entrepreneurship and appropriate adjustments to the content of teaching materials, and eventually enhance their teaching intention ( Al-Jubari, 2019 ; Al-Jubari et al, 2019 ; Chung and Lee, 2020 ; Donaldson et al, 2021 ; Lu et al, 2021 ). In the theoretical model, autonomy is still the strongest factor, which, significantly supported by statistic data, shows that the stronger teachers’ sense of autonomy grows, the stronger and clearer their positive attitude toward DEE teaching will become.…”

“…The interdisciplinary nature and complex content of digital entrepreneurship can increase teaching content and the integration of technological tools into teaching activities. This suggests a stronger demand for supporting teachers’ personal psychological success, a significantly stronger sense of competence, and an expectation for positive results of course content design ( Fellnhofer, 2019 ; Iwu et al, 2019 ; Vorbach et al, 2019 ; Lu et al, 2021 ). Therefore, with the enhancement of positive attitudes, teachers can continue to obtain more inner self-motivation.…”

“…Self-determination theory assumes a set of three basic psychological needs—autonomy, competence, and relatedness. It is believed that meeting these needs will lead to greater intrinsic motivation and expectation of positive results, affecting whether individual behavior will continue and whether this behavior can be internalized into the psychological state of an individual’s self-discipline ( Shir et al, 2019 ; Donaldson et al, 2021 ; Lu et al, 2021 ). For teaching activities of DDE, SDT can meet basic psychological needs and provide teachers with unique, meaningful backgrounds and opportunities related to new teaching methods, so that teachers can transform their work activities into more meaningful pursuits of their inherent growth and actively meet the need of their innate growth tendency ( Ryan and Deci, 2017 ; Al-Jubari et al, 2019 ).…”

“…In the teaching process, teachers tend to have a greater sense of autonomy, a better problem solving ability, and a clearer sense of relatedness, with enhanced positive attitudes toward digital entrepreneurship teaching ( Ryan and Deci, 2017 ; Shir et al, 2019 ; Donaldson et al, 2021 ; Lu et al, 2021 ). The interdisciplinary nature and complex content of digital entrepreneurship can increase teaching content and the integration of technological tools into teaching activities.…”

How Entrepreneurship Sustains Barriers in the Entrepreneurial Process—A Lesson from a Developing Nation

“…In Huuskonen [17] the authors mention that it is essential for entrepreneurs to educate themselves about information related to the institutions which could be of support for them. Low access and coordination with the social and business community can be a hurdle.…”