Unveiling Entrepreneurial Intentions: Empirical Evidence of the Iban Community in Kuching, Sarawak

Abstract

Entrepreneurial intention plays a key role in entrepreneurship. It gives the desire to start a firm or leads to the creation of new firms. Over the years, scholars have explained it using personality traits, cognitive models and, to a lesser extent, the role of social environment among graduates, policymakers, and potentials. However entrepreneurship is found to be significant for the development and well-being of society, a paradigm shift among Iban community is needed to stimulate economic growth and overall development in Sarawak. since it produces jobs and shapes innovativeness. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 100 Iban community from Kuching, Sarawak using partial least squares (PLS). Our results confirm that family upbringing positively influences the entrepreneurial information obtained in social system, which in turn, positively impacts entrepreneurial intention. We also found that entrepreneurial self-efficacy is activated in the context of Iban community, enhancing the influence of this information on entrepreneurial intention.