The determinants of students’ entrepreneurial intention: doctoral students as a case study

Abstract

The issue of entrepreneurship development, especially among young students, has always been an active topic. The complexity of the phenomenon requires an analysis of the factors likely to explain it, namely in the economic and socio-cultural context of emerging countries like Morocco. The present paper raises the question of the entrepreneurial intentions of doctoral students in Morocco in a context marked by a global economic and health crisis. Entrepreneurial intention is at the center of different research approaches in the field of entrepreneurship (trait approach, facts approach, process approach). This has attracted the interest of researchers to understand the process by which entrepreneurial intention is formed. Thus, several models have been developed and implemented to frame this process.  Along with the evolution of models of intention, there is a growing interest in the development of entrepreneurship in universities and particularly in the entrepreneurial intention of university students and graduates. Therefore, for the sake of analyzing the entrepreneurial intentions of doctoral students in a Moroccan university, the present article is based on the two main models, the model of the formation of the entrepreneurial occurrence (Sokol and Shapero, 1982) and the theory of planned behavior of Ajzen (1991). Based on a literature review, the formulation of our conceptual framework allowed us to elaborate the hypotheses and research model. Empirically, a survey was carried out on a sample of 152 PhD students from different disciplinary fields. The structural equation method through the PLS approach was used to test the validity of our hypotheses. The main results then demonstrate the impact of social norms and behavioural control on the entrepreneurial intention of PhD students.

JEL Classification : D91 ; L26 ; L31

Paper type: Empirical research