Impact of Entrepreneurship Education and Perceived social norms on Entrepreneurship Intention among youths

ABSTRACT

Available data shows that unemployment is one of the challenges confronting the youth in many developing countries including Nigeria. Government has formulated a number of policies to combat the menace. And these include the introduction entrepreneurship training in all tertiary institutions in the country. The objective of this study is therefore to investigate the extent to which Entrepreneurship Education and the Perception of the society influence the Entrepreneurship intention of the youths.Data was collected from graduating students of Kwara state Polytechnic Ilorin, Nigeria. A total of 285 questionnaires were distributed, 270 were returned out which 262 were used for analyses.SPSS. 23. Was used for data cleaning and initial analyses. Structural Equation Model SmartPLS 3 was employed for analysing the data.The findings revealed that both Entrepreneurship Education and Perceived Social Norms make significant contributors to Entrepreneurship intention. However, the contribution of perceived social norms is higher than that of Entrepreneurship education. It provides support for the hypothesized direct effects of the variables on the entrepreneurial intention among the graduating students the Polytechnic.This study therefore concludes that Entrepreneurship education is important. But social norms have higher influence. Therefore, policy makers need to pay more attention to social norms while it continues to give entrepreneurship education.

 KEY WORDS: Entrepreneurship education, perceived social norms, entrepreneurial intention.