Influence of biopsychosocial factors on entrepreneurial education and students' entrepreneurial inclination in selected Nigerian universities.

Abstract

Entrepreneurial education has attracted a great deal of attention worldwide because of the idea that it is one of the panaceas for today's societal unemployment problems among university graduates. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the relationship between entrepreneurial education and the entrepreneurial inclination of students at Nigerian universities. Even more importantly, the study examined the role of biopsychosocial factors as a moderator of the relationship between entrepreneurial attitude, entrepreneurial knowledge and venture creation skills and entrepreneurial inclination. Using cross-sectional data, 385 usable questionnaires were received from final-year undergraduate students from five universities in the South West geo-political Zone. Final-year students were selected based on the assumption that they must have completed their entrepreneurship modules in order to make decisions about their entrepreneurial activities. Of the sample, 68.31% were management students and 31.69% were non-management students. Preliminary statistical analysis was conducted using the IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (version 23), and covariance-based structural equation modeling was used to examine the study hypotheses using Analysis of Moments Structure (AMOS) (version 24). The study established that strong positive relationship exists between entrepreneurial education (entrepreneurial attitude and venture creation skills) and entrepreneurial inclination among Nigerian university students and the sub-samples of management and non-management students. The most gratifying results are those that indicate that biopsychosocial factors negatively moderate the relationship between entrepreneurial attitude and entrepreneurial inclination among Nigerian university students and non-management students. With regard to differences between groups, this study reveals that management students have higher levels of entrepreneurial attitude, entrepreneurial knowledge and venture creation skills than their non-management counterparts. The study contributes to the literature by highlighting the role of biopsychosocial factors in influencing entrepreneurial thinking amongst Nigerian university students. This suggests that university students could become potential entrepreneurs when they consider biopsychosocial factors to enable them develop the right attitude towards entrepreneurial inclination. The managerial implication of this study indicates that university administrators and other stakeholders should consider biopsychosocial factors to be important in response to increasing the inclination of university students to entrepreneurship. This will help increase prospective entrepreneurs and reduce graduate unemployment. The study opens a new frontier with regard to biopsychosocial factors as a moderator in the field of entrepreneurship.