Factors Influencing Attitude of Youth Towards Entrepreneurship

ABSTRACT

The study was carried out to investigate the attitude of youth towards entrepreneurship programs. It was aimed at identifying the capacity factors of potential youth entrepreneurs and the critical external factors influencing their attitude towards entrepreneurship programs. It was also aimed at determining the level of influence of these factors and identifying the perceived enhancing factors and inhibitions on the youth entrepreneurial skill development.

The data of the study was collected from two hundred and ten respondents who were in their final year in the tertiary institutions in southwestern Nigeria. The respondents were selected using the stratified random sampling method. Entrepreneurship program attitude was measured using the Likert scale, while the independent variables were measured by nominal and interval scaling techniques. Data were collected through pre-tested questionnaires. Descriptive analysis was used to describe and highlight the variables, while inferential statistical tools were applied in the analysis of the relationships existing between variables of interest.

The results show that innovativeness and industriousness were the entrepreneurial personality traits that scored very high. Infrastructure, finance, and technical factors were revealed to have been inhibiting their potentials, while the education system and the rate of information technology development were perceived to have positively impacted their attitude. A linear dependence between entrepreneurial personality traits, learning, and experience, and the general attitude was revealed. Social factors were among those revealed to have averagely influenced the attitude of the youth towards entrepreneurship programs.

The study concluded that entrepreneurial capacity factors, such as personality traits, learning, experiences, social factors and culture; and entrepreneurial enhancing factors, such as information technology development and education system have influenced the favorable attitude of the youth towards entrepreneurship programs. The study also concluded that the integration of some factor's, such as infrastructure and finance during information processing forming the beliefs of the youth have inhibited their skill development, thus developing an unfavorable attitude towards entrepreneurship programs.