THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERSONAL ATTITUDES, SUBJECTIVE NORMS, AND PERCEIVED BEHAVIOURAL CONTROL ON ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTION OF URBAN YOUTH IN CHINA

Abstract

While China has developed comprehensive policies to boost urban economic development and foster an innovative environment, there is still a lack of entrepreneurial spirit among urban young people. The misalignment of national innovation agendas and entrepreneurial intentions of urban youth may impede the shift towards a knowledge-based economy and the generation of stable and sustainable jobs. Therefore, it is important to examine the personal and situational factors that may influence entrepreneurial intention for this group. This study is based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour which extends entrepreneurship studies by shedding light on the entrepreneurial intentions of urban youth through the personal attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. Measurement instruments were modified from validated research instruments. Quantitative cross-sectional descriptive correlational research was used to examine relationships between the study constructs. Partial Least Squares (PLS) Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the collected data and was done with the help of SmartPLS 4. The results indicated that personal attitude, perceived social expectations and perceived behavioural control positively and significantly influenced entrepreneurial intention each. The findings indicate that entrepreneurial attitudes, perceived ability to handle entrepreneurial role and encouragement from influential others are factors that are more likely to influence the entrepreneurial thinking of young people when entrepreneurial attitude is perceived positively. The longitudinal approach is recommended for future studies to observe the changes over time and give more concrete evidence of the causal relationships between the psychological variables and entrepreneurial intention.