Attributions To Entrepreneurial Intent

Why do some people but not others choose to be entrepreneurs is a fundamental problem in the research field of entrepreneurship. This present research aims to find out the reasons why some people develop entrepreneurial intent, which is a part of this fundamental problem. This research used Chinese university students as samples, which is of practical significance. Chinese university graduates are large in number and high in unemployment thus governments encourage them to open their own business, but with high failure rate. People with entrepreneurial intent are more likely to create new ventures and succeed in the entrepreneurial process. This research presents and evaluates various theories used to explain why some people choose to be entrepreneurs. Tools from philosophy of knowledge are used to illustrate a reasonal explaination of the evolution of the theory in the field. This research combines social capital and cognitive mechanism perspectives to form a theoretical model to explain why some university students choose entrepreneurial career. Some university students in Wuhan were used as samples to collect primary data and statistical SEM was used to test the theoretical model proposed.The introduction part explained the research background and its significance, followed by a brief evaluation of the research in the focal area in order to indentify the research gaps based on which I propose five research objectives. The section also introduces briefly the research methods, contributions and possible limitations.The question of why some people but not others choose to be entrepreneurs is not yet perfectly answered, so chapter 1 focuses on the evaluation of theories seeking to answer this question. It is found that the fundamental assumption of this research question is that entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs are different, with different theoretical perspectives focusing on different aspects of these differences. Each theoretical perspective functions as a protecting belt for the hard core that insisting entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs are different.The first part of Chapter 1 probes into the problems of the theories that use personal traits or demographic characteristics to differentiate entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs. I only select 4 typical personal traits that are widely researched in this area:risk propensity, need of achievement, locus of control, and tolerance of ambiguity. Some past empirical research support that these traits do differentiate two groups of people, while other research results falsified such hypotheses. Research also finds that demographic variables are significantly related to entrepreneurial intent, but they can explain less than 0.3% of the total variance, thus they can be ignored.The question why do some people but not others choose to be entrepreneurs can divide into two sub questions. First, what factors lead people to choose entrepreneurial career, which is focusing on the search of casual relationships. Second, what are the differences between people who choose and who don't choose entrepreneurial career, which is focusing on the analysis of variance. The past research on trait theory seeks to analyse variance, since the results are equivocal, researchers interests shift to the first question. Personal characteristics account for just one part of a series of sufficient conditions for entrepreneurial intent and it is necessary to seek for other conditions. The second part of chapter 1 explores other causes leading to entrepreneurial career, including the identification of entrepreneurial opportunities, cognitive factors, and social capital.Chapter 2 critically evaluated existent literature surrounding the theoretical models that I proposed. Individuals that are embedded in different social backgrounds may be affected by their idiosyncratic experiences and form some entrepreneurship-related cognitive biases that may push them to choose entrepreneurial career. Cognitive biases may enhance people's risk propensity or reduce their perceived risks, thus lowering the perceived barriers to entrepreneurial career choice. Social capital may partly determine an individual's entrepreneurship-related way of thinking by affecting what information individual chooses to recognize and how to interpret this information. As such, in some cases, people are lured to choose to be entrepreneurs. According to the theoretical model, I pose following hypotheses:cognitive biases are positively related to entrepreneurial intent, the characteristics of an individual's social network is positively related to cognitive biases and entrepreneurial intent respectively.Chapter 3 discusses the philosophical and methodological assumptions of this research. First, I evaluated the ontological and epistemological assumptions used in this research field. I also presented the discussion of whether entrepreneurial intent externally exists as a reality. Second, I reflected how I got the knowledge about the entrepreneurial intent mechanism proposed in chapter 2. I also discussed the ontological and epistemological assumptions of this research. Third, I discussed the possible challenges to the philosophical assumptions of this research and defend my position.Chapter 4 reports the design of the empirical research, including such topics as data, sampling methods, design of instruments, and methods. Most of the scales used in this research were tested in the past research and these scales may be adjusted to suit for the present research setting if it is necessary. A pilot study was carried out and the scales were further adjusted according to the results of the pilot study. In the subsequent formal research, snowball sampling methods are used and 339 samples are selected. Survey methods were used to collect primary and quantitative data about the characteristics of social networks of university students, cognitive biases, and entrepreneurial intent.Chapter 5 presents the results of pilot study and explain the modification to the scales to be used in the formal research. Due to the deletion of two sub-scales because of their failure in reliability and validity tests, some theories set in Chapter 4 can't be tested, so, the theoretical framework of this research is fine tuned.With the help of Structural Equation Modelling, chapter 7 analysed and discussed the data collected. The indicators for the measurement model are as follows: X2= 120.182, df=104, Sig.= 0.133, CMIN/DF= 1.156, GFI= 0.961, CFI= 0.990, RMESA= 0.21, indicating acceptable goodness of fit. The convergence, discriminant, nomological, and face validity are all acceptable, indicating good construct validity of the measurement model. By looking at residual matrix and modification index, it is found that it is not necessary to modify the model. After the measurement model passed the tests, I posed the structural model, and setting 11 hypotheses according to the structural model. The indicators for the structural model are as follows:i= 159.880, df= 108, p= 0.001, CMIN/DF= 1.480, CFI= 0.970, RMSEA=0.038, with the goodness of fit within the acceptable range. The standard coefficient of every structural relation is significant, thus not able to reject hypotheses 1-8.In order to test the mediating role played by cognitive biases between the characteristics of social network and entrepreneurial intent, I freed the relations between three variables about characteristics of social network and entrepreneurial intent and let the model to estimate the coefficients of these relationships. The goodness of fit for the modified model is acceptable. Three direct effects are significant, thus not rejecting hypotheses 9-11. However, after the three relationships are added, the relationship between overconfidence and entrepreneurial intent is no longer significant.The conclusion first summarized the research results surround the five research objectives set in the introduction. By applying the research results, I made five policy recommendations. Finally, based on the limitations and contributions of this research, I recommended future research directions for this field.