Planned behaviour of tourism students’ entrepreneurial intentions in China

ABSTRACT

This research aims to investigate the influence of planned behaviour and personal variables on entrepreneurial intention in order to explain and improve low entrepreneurial intention among tourism students in China. A total of 109 tourism students were surveyed to find the key factors affecting their entrepreneurial intention by factor analysis. The six hypotheses were then tested in a sample of 267 Chinese tourism students. According to structural equation modelling (SEM), it was found that there are statistically significant relationships between personal attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and entrepreneurial intention. Multi-group analysis further showed that there are differences between personal attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control according to different personal variables. The results highlight the importance of taking a subdividing approach when researching the factors that influence entrepreneurial intention. Thus, we believe a number of implications about the most effective role of creating entrepreneurial atmosphere from universities, enhancing tourism students’ self-efficacy, and setting student-centred policies in promoting and developing entrepreneurial intention.

KEYWORDS:

• The theory of planned behaviour
• tourism student
• entrepreneurial intention
• multi-group analysis

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• M13
• C44
• C53
• I21
• J71

Acknowledgements

Hu Mei and Zehui Zhan jointly initiated the project and wrote the paper. Hu Mei led the project. Hu Mei and Zehui Zhan made contribution in data collection, analysed the data, and led the writing. Patrick S.W. Fong, Ting Liang, Zicheng Ma contributed in the finalization of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. We are grateful to Arthur Cheung, City University of Hong Kong, for revising, and all the participants in this study for their cooperation.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences [grant number 13YJC880105], [grant number 14YJC880045]; the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [grant number 2014M550438]; the Education Section Youth Project of the National Social Science Fund in China [CCA130137]; the Excellent youth teacher in higher education in Guangdong Province [grant number Yq2013048]; and the National youth project of Natural Science Foundation in China [grant number 61305144].