Effects of Emotions on the Entrepreneurial Attitudes, Self-Efficacy and Intentions of University Students

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has been considered a solution to the unemployment challenges in many economies in the world. Earlier models for predicting entrepreneurial intentions (EI) focused on environmental factors that influence the decision of an individual to start a new business, but overlooked the role played by background such as emotions. To fill this void, we examined how emotions of students would influence their attitudes, self-efficacy and EI. Data collected from 211 university students were analysed using a step-wise regression and PROCESS macro-based on SPSS. Smart PLS software was used to construct a path analysis model. The results revealed that activated unpleasant emotion (AUE) negatively and significantly influenced students’ attitudes (β = 0.41, p  0.01) and self-efficacy (β = 0.36, p  0.01), both of which significantly influenced their EIs. The relationship between the AUE and EI were significantly mediated by both attitude and self-efficacy. The results from correlational analysis showed that the relationship between subjective norm (SN) and EI was not significant. The results of path analysis showed that AUE was negatively related to both attitude (β = -0.217, p  0.01) and self-efficacy (β = -0.191, p  0.01). The practical implication of these findings is that, advocates of entrepreneurship initiatives should critically consider regulating the emotions of students to ensure they have a positive influence on the attitudes and self-efficacy of students’ entrepreneurship initiatives. By incorporating emotions in the prediction of EI, the study also extend the power of the TPB model as a predictor of EI.