An Investigation of Entrepreneurial Intention amongst Arab University Students

This study has proposed a framework to pinpoint factors that could influence the intention to become an entrepreneur among university students from four different Middle East countries. The proposed framework has integrated different explanatory factors that have been used within different approaches into one framework, and assess their relative importance to influence entrepreneurial intentions. Also, the framework was tested on a large diversified multi-country sample from four Middle East countries (Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Oman).The findings stress the role that a university could play at motivating its students to be entrepreneurial and the governmental role in creating a perceived climate that encourages entrepreneurship.


Introduction
Scholars and researchers have pinpointed that entrepreneurship do impact the economic growth and development of a country in general (Ma´rio et al., 2010) and specifically in higher income countries (Nabi & Lin˜a´n, 2011).The economic influence of entrepreneurship is highlighted by what is called the "entrepreneurial economy" (Thurik, 2009).Many countries have embraced entrepreneurial activities as a primary stream of renovating their economy, a recipe to cope with unemployment problems, and promoted as an enabler of economic progress and job creation in most developing countries.So, the economic function of entrepreneurs is being considered as a development agent (Lin˜a´n, Rodriguez-cohard, & Rueda-cantuche, 2005).Consequently, entrepreneurship has captured the attention of both scholars and policy makers during the last decades.Their attention falls on the question of why some people choose an entrepreneurial career and others do not.
Previous studies have focused on exploring and investigating a wide array of possible enablers of entrepreneurial activity.The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (Reynolds et al., 2001) has emphasized that individual's possessing limited education are less enthusiastic to participate in entrepreneurial activities (Turk & Selcuk, 2009).Therefore, getting an adequate and a proper education may encourage entrepreneurial intention of an individual.Consequently, universities play a major role as a pool of potential sources of future entrepreneurs and in the process affect the intention aspects to be entrepreneurs (Gibb, 1996;Etzkowitz et al., 2000;Johannisson et al., 1998).Many universities in the Middle East countries have recognized this role and established incubators and entrepreneurship centers on campus in order to motivate students to be future potential entrepreneurs.There is a paramount increasing attention on graduate entrepreneurship in developed countries as it appears that entrepreneurial intentions are a function of a "regional dimension".But research on entrepreneurial intention and education in developing countries is still lacking behind.It is of paramount important to investigate, digest, and understand the perceptions of students at higher education level regarding factors that influence their intention to be entrepreneurial (Stephen et al., 2005;Vaillant & Lafuente, 2007).Based on these premises, our central research questions are: what are the entrepreneurial intentions on university students in different middle-east countries?What are the perceptual enablers that most contribute to entrepreneurial intentions?The purpose of the current study is to explore and analyze factors that could influence the entrepreneurial intention of university students in a targeted sample of Middle East countries (Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, & Oman).
This study adopts the definition of entrepreneurial intention as a conscious awareness and conviction by an

Conviction:
The framework proposes that a major determinant of intention is the individual's conviction to start a new firm is the best choice as a career.This variable has been highlighted in previous studies (Boyd and Vozikis, 1994;Krueger, 1994).But, the proposed framework suggests that this variable is formed and influenced by another variable (motivation to study entrepreneurship).The responses to the six items were obtained on a 5-point scale with 1 being ''very unlikely'' and 5 being ''very likely'' as shown in Appendix A. Based on the above discussion, it is hypothesized that: H1. Entrepreneurial intention of university students relates with conviction to start a business.

Psychometric variables:
This study as others wants to investigate the effect of psychometric variables on intention (Iakovleva, Kolvereid, & Stephan, 2011).The suggested variables are family history of being entrepreneurs, country, and type of a university (state or private), gender, work experience and self employed as shown in Appendix-A.Therefore, the paper hypothesized that: H2: Psychometric variables (such as family history of being entrepreneurs, country, and type of a university; state or private, gender, work experience and self employed) have effects on Entrepreneurial intention of university students.
Motivation to study entrepreneurship: Hytti et al. (2010) have pointed in their study that motivation is a condition driven by motives and drives the individual to act in a certain way.It can encourage or discourage the behavior.Cognitive theories and behaviorist emphasize the impact of intrinsic and extrinsic factors in stimulating motivation (Good & Brophy, 1990).This study suggests that in order to reach the conviction state to start a new business, motivation regardless from intrinsic or extrinsic factors must exist (Helm-Stevens & Griego, 2009) prior to the conviction state.The extrinsic factor that could contribute to the motivation variable is perceived situation favorably or unfavorably.The responses to the six items were obtained on a 5-point scale with 1 being ''strongly disagree'' and 5 being ''strongly agree'' as shown in Appendix-A.Based on this proposition, it is hypothesized that: H3: Students who are motivated to study entrepreneurship studies are more likely to have higher convictions to start their own business.

Perceived Situation:
The significance of situational factors for entrepreneurial decision is highlighted and investigated in the literature (Storey, 1994;Bird, 1993;Reynolds, 1991).Many scholars have indicated that understanding the relevant contextual factors can provide insights into the nature and dimensions of entrepreneurial climate in a country (Devonish et al., 2010).This study proposes that perceived situation will affect and influence the motivation to study entrepreneurship and consequently form the conviction to start a new business.This perception by an individual is much more relevant to the conviction to start a business as it motivates or demotivates an individual.Also, this perception is different from one person to the other given the same situation.This study investigates several contextual factors as perceived by an individual such as (Lu¨thje & Franke, 2003;Turker & Selcuk, 2009;Schwars et al., 2009): • Society: how society looks at entrepreneurs.
• Government policy: support of entrepreneurs.
• Finance: difficulty of accessing capital to fund new business start-ups.
• Market: opportunities to start a new business in a country.
• University education: It is believed that university education could contribute to increasing the number and quality of entrepreneurs in a country (Matlay, 2006).Recent results show that a university education and support in entrepreneurship activities (such as incubator on campus) has a positive effect on the desirability and feasibility of starting a new business (Peterman & Kennedy, 2003).Thus, the paper hypothesized that: H4: Students who have positive perception of the external environment (perceived situation) are more likely to be motivated to enlist or participate in studying entrepreneurship studies.
The responses to the perceived situation constructs were obtained on a 5-point scale with 1 being ''strongly disagree'' and 5 being ''strongly agree'' as shown in Appendix A.

Intention:
The significance of intention as a predictor of planned behavior (such as the decision to start a new company) has been emphasized in literature (Krueger, Reilly, & Carsrud, 2000).So, this study considers this variable as a dependent measure in the proposed framework.The respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which they have thought, intended, desired, faced with the opportunity, or planned to open a business.The responses to the five items were obtained on a 5-point scale with 1 being ''very unlikely'' and 5 being ''very likely'' as shown in Appendix A. Therefore, the paper hypothesized that: H5.The determinants of Entrepreneurial intention are the same between students in selected Arab countries.

Data Collection Methodology
This study aims to explore and analyze factors that could influence the entrepreneurial intention of university students.The study used both quantitative and qualitative methods for collecting data.The time span for collecting these data was from March, 2012 to September, 2012.The data was gathered from the research team through traditional and electronically questionnaires.The quantitative approach was based on a survey questionnaire broken down into five sections.This questionnaire was reviewed by experts in the field.Furthermore, the researchers were deployed over a one-month period to interview experts in the field.In order to prepare the questionnaire, we conducted an in depth review of related literature, several interviews with faculty members, and other experts (entrepreneurship center management).Our selection of items was based on literature review (Intention, Conviction, Perceived Situation, and Motivation to study entrepreneurship) and an important ratings (family history of being entrepreneurs, country, type of a university (state or private), sex, work experience and self employed) provided by literature review, experts and faculty members.The questionnaire was first designed in English and then carefully translated into Arabic by the research team using the translation-back-translation technique (Hambleton, 1994).Both languages were included in the distributed questionnaire (Appendix-A).

Sampling
The sample size for this study was set at 1000 students.However, we drew stratified targeted samples in all universities and received a highly satisfactory overall response rate approximate to 85 percent.In constructing the sample for this study, the data was complied from several departments at different universities in different countries physically and electronically.To be more specific, four initial requirements were taken under consideration and used to create the sample distribution (Table 1).The first consideration would involve state and private universities in each country.The second would involve universities that own business incubators and that did not own.The third would involve students from different departments; business, IT, and engineering.The last consideration would consist of students from the third and fourth-level.

Findings and Discussion
The paper first applies the descriptive statistics to explore the general profile of the respondents.Table-2 presents the average and standard deviation performance score for each construct and sub-construct.The constructs measures were self reports from respondents and reflect their perceptions of the proposed constructs.On average, it appears that respondents had a moderate intention, conviction to be entrepreneurial, and motivated to study Entrepreneurship.But, their perception of the market condition, governmental regulations and policies, and their university education were moderately low even though the financial sources and the society encouragement were moderate.Next, this study examines the validity and reliability analysis.As a first step to validate the appropriateness of the proposed framework, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to confirm whether the items actually belong to the factors for which they are theoretically designed.The CFA was performed by carrying out path analysis using structural equation modeling.The hypothesized measurement model was tested for model fit.The path model showed an acceptable fit ((x 2/df = 10.993p < 0.005, RMSEA = 0.073, CFI = 0.993, GFI= 0.994, TLI= 0.978).Therefore, it can be concluded that the proposed constructs that affect intention can be generalized into four major dimensions (conviction, motivation, perceived situation, and psychometric parameters).The second step in validating the framework is to determine the relative influence of the independent variables, a hierarchical stepwise multiple regression was run on intention to start a business, using the conviction construct's items as potential predictors, while using the demographics parameters as control variables (country, type of a university, gender, work experience, self-employed, family owns a business, major, university owns an incubator).Stepwise regression is the combination of forward selection and backward elimination methods.The purpose of the stepwise regression method is to find a meaningful subset of independent input variables which predict the dependent variable correctly.In every iteration, the terms that must be included or excluded in the model are reassessed using their partial F statistics at every iteration.The best subset method finds the possible n best subsets of i terms (i = 1, 2,…, k) of the regression model.For each subset, it calculates the coefficient of determination-R 2 and adjusted R 2 values, so that we can choose a subset that has a good balance of high R 2 adj and small number of terms.R 2 provides a measure of how well outputs are likely to be predicted by the regression model.The bigger the value, the better fit the model.However, only considering R 2 is not adequate to evaluate a regression function because the R 2 value always increases with the addition of a new input variable to the function, even if it is not significant.If the R 2 adj value is significantly lower than R 2 , it normally means that one or more explanatory variables are missing.Therefore, usually R 2 adj value is used for evaluating a regression function and it is preferable for R 2 adj to be large and close enough to the R 2 .
For the combined data, a total of 57.69 percent of the variance was explained as shown in Table -3.Based on this analysis, the following psychometric parameters were deleted (type of a university, Gender, Work Experience, Major, and a University owns an Incubator) from further analysis.Also, the following items that represent the Conviction construct were deleted (Con-2) and the average of the construct were recalculated for further analysis.
In addition, the authors use Cronbach's Alpha to examine internal consistency which is mainly used to assess the reliability of the proposed constructs (Nunnally, 1978).If the value of Cronbach's Alpha is greater than 0.6, the reliability of the responding survey's results proves to be acceptable.
Table 3. Stepwise analysis of psychometric parameters and conviction items upon intention (R= removed) Alpha-to-Enter: 0.05 Alpha-to-Remove: 0.05 Step-1 Step-3 Step-5 Step Note.For extra explanations of Con-1 to Con-5, see Appendix-A.
After aforementioned reliability and validity analyses, this study employs Multivariable Regression analysis to examine the proposed research hypotheses.The authors divide the research model into three sections for detailed discussion.The first section is developed to examine the effects of essential key factors on Intention which are the Conviction construct and the remaining psychometric parameters (Country, Work Experience, self-employed).
The second section is developed to examine the effects of the "Motivation to Study Entrepreneurship" construct on the "Conviction" construct.Finally, the third section examines the effects of the "Perceived Situation" construct on the "Motivation to Study Entrepreneurship" construct.
From the first section, which is shown from Table-4, the psychometric parameters (country, Work experience, self-employed) do a significant influence on the "Intention" construct (Hypothesis 2).Also, the "Conviction" construct is significantly important in predicting the "Intention" construct (Hypothesis 1).The results from Table-4 show that the proposed relations with the "Intention" construct is valid and was able to explain 56.7% of the variability of the construct, and all independent variables are significantly important.The regression equation is: Dependent variable: Intention From the second section, the "Motivation" construct was examined to determine its effect on the "Conviction" construct.The results show that the proposed relations with the "Conviction" construct is valid and was able to explain 45.8% of the variability of the construct, and the independent construct "Motivation" is significantly important (Hypothesis 3).
From the third section, which is shown from Table-5, the "Perceived situation" construct was developed to determine its effect on the "Motivation" construct.The results show that students who have positive perception of the external environment are more likely to be motivated to enlist or participate in studying entrepreneurship studies (Hypothesis 4).The results from Table-5 show that the proposed relations with the "Motivation" construct is valid and was able to explain 30.2% of the variability of the construct, and all independent variables are significantly important.The regression equation is: Motivation= 1.20 + 0.179 (Market) + 0.133 (Financial) + 0.336 (Social) + 0.104 (University) Dependent variable: Motivation Also, ANOVA was used to test the fifth hypothesis (there are no differences of Intention among students from different Arab countries).The result from Table 6 shows that there are differences of the "Intention" construct levels among students from different Arab countries as evident by the p-value.Table 7 shows a summary of hypotheses findings.All hypotheses are accepted except hypotheses number 1 (H1).

Conclusions
Some limitations must be acknowledged here.First, the cross-sectional nature of a survey design limits the inferences drawn about causality between the constructs of interest, while this shortcoming presents opportunities for future research to investigate; this approach is consistent with prior research in this area.Second, a more comprehensive effort at developing multidimensional scales of the proposed constructs is an area worthy of future research.Finally, the overall proposed framework is limited to the inclusion of constructs driven by parsimony, while the model fit results supports the appropriateness of the proposed constructs and explains adequate variances, but potentially more variables could be included to further explain how intention to be entrepreneurial could be motivated.
The findings have important implications for governmental policy makers and university administrators.First, governmental policies could be enacted in order to create a climate that motivates individuals to be entrepreneurial.The policies should be targeted to support the creation of microfinance sector in a country.Second, ease of regulations, laws, and procedures to start a business.Also, university administrators are concerned with the findings of this study in the following ways.First, a university curriculum could be designed to emphasize the importance to be entrepreneurial, and to provide the necessary skills and tools to support such a desire of its students.Second, a university could promote entrepreneurship throughout its campus via conferences and workshops.Third, a university could establish on-campus incubators and entrepreneurial center unit that is responsible for providing adequate training and facilities to support new business starters' for its students and the community.
This study extends the entrepreneurial intention literature by conceptualizing and proposing a framework that could predict the intention among university students.The findings stress the role that a university could play at motivating its students to be entrepreneurial and the governmental role in creating a perceived climate that encourages entrepreneurship.Overall, this study advances the understanding of how intention among university students can be influenced and pinpoints to different drivers that could be under the control a university and the government.The study encourages future research efforts to extend the findings and offer further insights into this important topic.

Conviction
If I came up with a good business idea, I would take the risk of establishing my own business (Con-1) I think I need training to acquire needed skills to run my own business (Con-2) I would be very happy running my own business (Con-3) To have my own business would be the best way to support my self (Con-4) To have my own business would be the best way to support to improve my financial position (Con-5) There are high competitive pressures to start up a business (PRMK-1)

Market
Most business ideas have been realized before (PRMK-2) There are not many business/entrepreneurial opportunities in our country (PRMK-3) Our economy provides many opportunities for startup business (PRMK-4) The course work at my university provides me with the knowledge required to startup a new business (PRUV-1)

Strongly
The education at my university encourages me to develop creative ideas for being an entrepreneur (PRUV-2) My university develops my entrepreneurial skills and abilities (PRUV-3) My university actively promotes the process of founding a new business (PRUV-4) My university provides a strong network of new venture investors (PRUV-5) The courses at my university foster the social and leadership skills needed to startup new business (PRUV-6) The course work at my university prepares me well for self-employment (PRUV-7) The courses at my university helps me to create a business plan and a business concept (PRUV-8) The courses at my university help me to understand the type of issues that confront an entrepreneur in taking an idea to market (PRUV-9) The Studying entrepreneurship is not useless, since one day I may be an entrepreneur myself (MENT-3) Studying entrepreneurship is important for me, since it helps me to better understand entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs (MENT-4) When I study entrepreneurship, it is important that I will learn the necessary knowledge and skills needed in entrepreneurship (MENT-5)‫ا‬ When one studies entrepreneurship, it is possible to familiarize oneself with entrepreneurs and their customs (MENT-6) Country, 1= Egypt, 2= Lebanon, 3= Oman, 4= Jordan variables (family history, self-employed, country) have effects on Entrepreneurial intention of university students Accept H3 Students who are motivated to study entrepreneurship studies are more likely to have higher convictions to start their own business Accept H4 Students who have positive perception of the external environment are more likely to be motivated to enlist or participate in studying entrepreneurship studies Accept H5 The determinants of Entrepreneurial intention are the same between students in selected Arab countries Reject about starting my own business (In-1) I intend to start a business within five years of graduation (In-2) I have strong desire to be the owner of my business (In-3) I will not mind dropping out of my studies if some good business opportunity comes my way.(In-4) Planning for some kind of business will be an important part of my career.
places to venture capital other than banks in my country (PRFI-1) Taking loans from banks is quite difficult for entrepreneurs in my country (PRFI-2) sufficient financial subsidies for startup business (PRGV-1) Our government have qualified consultant and support for new businesses (PRGV-2) Government laws (rules and regulations) are adverse to running a business (PRGV-3)The procedures and policies for founding a new business are unclear (PRGV-4) Our government support and encourages entrepreneurs efforts (PRGV-5) courses at my university provided me with the necessary techniques for finding out what the market wants (PRUV-10) The courses at my university exposed me to know how to legally finance a new business concept (PRUV-11) My university arranges for conferences or workshops on entrepreneurship (PRUV-12) My university promotes an awareness of entrepreneurship as a possible career choice (PRUV-13) My university brings students in contact with the network needed to start a new business (PRUV-14) My university brings entrepreneurial students as speakers to seminars (PRUV-15) My university provides students with the financial means needed to start a new business (PRUV-16) I am interested in studying entrepreneurship (MENT-1) I would study entrepreneurship even if I would not have to (MENT-2)

Table 1 .
Sample distribution

Table 4 .
Multivariable regression analysis to predict intention

Table 5 .
Multivariable regression analysis to predict motivation

Table 6 .
One-way ANOVA: intention versus country

Table 7 .
Summary of hypotheses findings