Antecedents of Entrepreneurship Intentions of Final Year Students in the Faculty of Business and Accounting at Botho University in Botswana

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate factors that have an explanatory or predictive power on the intentions of students to start their own business. Studies show that the propensity of a person to start a new venture is moderated by a number of factors within the individual and also external to the individual hence the purpose of the study to identify those factors and how much predictive power they have. A population of 250 from a population of 540 final year students at Botho University participated in the study. Simple random sampling technique was used to select the students. A questionnaire that used a 4-point Likert scale was used for data collection. Data was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20. A criterion mean was used as part of descriptive statics for analysing the data. Results of the study showed that personality traits, family background, return on investment, entrepreneurship education, environmental factors and competition had a high predictive power on the entrepreneurship intentions of final year students at Botho University. Family background according to results had the highest predictive power followed by personality traits and level of education.