Factors affecting students’ entrepreneurial intentions and their differences based on gender, tribe, and parents’ occupation: a cross-sectional study

Introduction

The prevailing patriarchal culture in Indonesia positions men as the bread winners of their families, while women are relegated to taking care of the household. This fact is very obvious from the Gender Empowerment Index in Indonesia in 2019, which is 75.24.¹ Thus, one can say that the Indonesian patriarchal culture places obstacles on the pathways of women that hinder them from entering into the business world. Over the last three decades, entrepreneurship has emerged as an economic power in the world,² and it has become an essential element for the economic growth and development of European countries.³ However, for developing countries, attention should be paid to factors that can influence an individual's intention to start a new business.⁴

Currently, the number of female students in Indonesia is 51.18%, which is higher than male students' at 48.82% (PDDikti.go.id). Therefore, this presents an excellent opportunity to increase the role of women in entrepreneurship through higher education. The readiness to enter the business world depends on the entrepreneurial intentions of those involved, and previous research has shows that, there are differences in entrepreneurial intentions between men and women,^4,5 showing that. Entrepreneurial intentions of men are higher than womens.^7–9 In particular, fear of failure has been highlited as a barrier for women who are non-entrepreneurs to release their entrepreneurial intentions.¹⁰

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the roles of cognitive approach and self-efficacy, since there is a direct relationship between educational background, knowledge through behavioral characteristics, and entrepreneurial intentions.¹¹ Entrepreneurship education is essential because it significantly increases entrepreneurial knowledge,¹² including forming, planning, running, or developing a business, which are skill that an entrepreneur needs. In addition, moderating the influence of gender on individual entrepreneurial orientation is required,¹³ and Sajjad & Dad¹⁴ have found a cultural connection to entrepreneurial intentions. Another factor that determines entrepreneurial intention is the level of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a belief that encourages individuals to do and achieve something.¹⁵ Self-efficacy can make someone have the desire to do something because they have the knowledge, skills, and ability to face various problems. Also, it is known that self-efficacy has a positive and significant effect on entrepreneurial intentions.^16,17 Generally, parents expect their children to continue in the line of their professions, especially when they retire. Haq & Setiyani¹⁸ explained that entrepreneur parents influence their children's intention to become entrepreneurs, and a family of entrepreneurs has a significant impact on entrepreneurial intentions in college graduates. These families provide positive experiences that impact on their children's intention to become entrepreneurs.¹⁹

This study examined the predictor variables, which are related to students' interest in becoming entrepreneurs, in order to see if there are differences in entrepreneurial knowledge, self-efficacy, and entrepreneurial intentions between gender, parent's occupation, and tribe.

Methods

Results

A total of 260 students returned the questionnaire;, male participants numbered 52 individuals, while female participants numbered 208 individuals. In total, 129 participants came from the Batak Toba tribe, 34 individuals came from Batak Karo, 15 were from Batak Simalungun, 4 were from Batak Dairi/Pakpak, 35 were Javanese, 7 were Melayu, 6 were Nias, 2 were Chinese, 14 were Batak Mandailing, 7 were Minang, and 3 were Aceh. A total of 4 individuals belonged to other tribes not described above.

For gender, there was no significant difference in the level of entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial intention, and self-efficacy (Table 1). When examining the students' tribe, there was also no significant difference between entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial intentions, and self-efficacy (Table 2). The number of students was predominantly Toba Batak tribe at 49.62% followed by Javanese 13.46%, Batak Karo 13.08%. We observed that the average score of students' entrepreneurial intentions from Chinese tribe was the highest at 4.085, and the lowest was Karo tribe at 3.451 (scale 1-5).

Figure 1. Research model for SEM-PLS analysis.

We observed that students' entrepreneurial intentions based on their parents' occupation have no significant difference. However, the average score of the entrepreneurial intentions, showed that for students whose parents have their own businesses scored 3.72, while students from white collar families scored 3.59. Familied who owned their own businesses consisted of entrepreneurs, farmers, and fishermen. Meanwhile, white collar families cooperated with other people or agencies such as state-owned enterprises employees, civil servants, soldier/police, and private employees.

Discussion

The desire to increase women's participation in Indonesia's political and economic sectors can be done through higher education. This desire gained momentum as women's participation in higher education continued to increase and women's achievements were on par with men. In fact, it has been observed that women's academic achievement is higher than men.²² In terms of self-efficacy, there is no difference between genders. Instead, women have a more adaptive approach when doing learning tasks.^23,24 The problem lies in increasing women's intention to be active in the economic field and how to eliminate the fear of failure, which is a barrier to entering the business world. This study analyzed whether there are differences in the level of entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial intentions, and self-efficacy between genders. However, it was observed that there is no significant difference between the two. When viewed from the average score of entrepreneurial intentions, women have a slightly higher score, with a score of 3.69, as compared to men who have a score of 3.65. This is a valuable asset that should encourage women to become entrepreneurs, because the results of previous researches stated that the entrepreneurial intention of male students was higher than female students'^8,9,25 as well as women having lesser intentions to starting a business.²⁶ Therefore, this study has implications for how to design entrepreneurship education that can change the orientation of female students to become entrepreneurs.

In Indonesia, women are more interested in becoming teachers than entrepreneurs. In 2020, the number of female teachers was at a percentage of 69.84%, while that of male teachers was 30.16%. At the tertiary level, female students in education majors are also higher in number. This situation buttresses the fact that women's intentions to become entrepreneurs are still low. Davis & Shaver²⁷ explained that women are less likely than men to increase entrepreneur numbers. One solution that can be proffered is for the government and all stake holders to provide entrepreneurship education to women so as to increase their entrepreneurial intentions. This is important because as Oosterbeek et al.²⁸ and Westhead & Solesvik²⁹ opined, entrepreneurship education is designed to be better able to increase the entrepreneurial intention of the male students. Gender stereotypes may make women to consider themselves as less competent than men in entrepreneurship.³⁰ Not only that, barriers to women's entrepreneurship can be in the form of social, economic exclusion, and inequality.²⁵

In this study, the respondents were divided into 12 tribes. The Toba Batak tribe consisted of the majority of the study population (49.62%), which was almost half of the respondents. This study found no significant differences in terms of the level of entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial intentions, and efficacy when viewed from the category of tribe. However, when viewed from the average score for the three aspects, it would be observed that the Chinese tribe had a higher scores than other tribes. However, the accuracy is low due to the minimal number of samples for the Chinese tribe. This information aligns with business practices so far, at least in Indonesia, which is more dominated by Chinese ethnic groups.³¹ When analyzed further, the number of students' in the ethnic groups of the Batak tribe was far greater, consisting of the Toba Batak, Karo, Simalungun, Dairi/Pakpak, and Mandailing Batak. The number of Batak respondents was 196 (75.38%). The Batak tribe adheres to traditional culture. In the patrilineal system, the men's position is more dominant than the women's position, and boys will become family heirs.^32,33 Therefore, this inequality gives rise to the following question: does this position harm women's entrepreneurial intentions? Our study did not analyses this question; however, it will be interesting to further study the situation, especially the role of families in preparing their offspring for the future. Are there differences in educating children from various tribes? Is there any tribe that focuses more on educating its children to become entrepreneurs? These are questions that need to be answered.

Table 1 shows no difference in entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial intentions, and self-efficacy between female and male students. It is hoped that women's entrepreneurial intentions will increase in order to encourage them to be better prepared to become entrepreneurs. This is because previous research show prove that men and women are both high achievers, but men are more likely to be accepted when applying for a job.²⁴ Furthermore, women and men are treated differently in the workplace. Sometimes, women are treated less favorably than men.³⁴ This situation should challenge women to focus more on entering into entrepreneurship rather than applying for jobs.

Entrepreneurial intentions can also be seen from the perspective of the correlation between parents' work and the level of their children's entrepreneurial intentions. This is considered essential because it helps us to know how families educate children and prepare them for the future. Family is an effective and efficient place to build entrepreneurs, and the family can be a model for entrepreneurs.³⁵ Parents who work as entrepreneurs are also known to be one of the factors that encourages children's intentions to become entrepreneurs.^36,37 An entrepreneur family background encourages a higher entrepreneurial intensity score.³⁸ Family support is also known to be positively related to the success of women entrepreneurs.³⁹

Based on Table 3, there is no difference in the entrepreneurial intentions between students who have entrepreneur parents or non-entrepreneur parents. This indicates that the work of parents has no impact on the level of students' entrepreneurial intentions. If we look at the average score of entrepreneurial intentions, students who have entrepreneurial parents only have a score that is 3.62% higher. This research's findings provide an early indication that parents do not direct their children to follow their work. On the other hand, it seems that parents often give freedom to their children to determine their own future work. The results are quite impressive because there is no difference in the entrepreneurial intentions, while other researches generally state that women's entrepreneurial intentions are lower.^29,40 However, further investigation needs to be done to determine whether there is a role for informal education that takes place within the family system.

From the results of the hypothesis testing, entrepreneurial knowledge has a positive and significant effect on entrepreneurial intentions. This explains that people in charge of running a business are better able to run the business. This condition encourages higher entrepreneurial intentions. The level of entrepreneurial learning achievement also contributes to students' entrepreneurial intentions,⁴¹ because entrepreneurship learning achievement is a description of the entrepreneurial knowledge that is owned.

Entrepreneurial knowledge can be increased through entrepreneurship education. The European Union provides entrepreneurship education to equip knowledge and encourage entrepreneurial careers' attractiveness to the younger generation.⁴² Entrepreneurship education can develop entrepreneurial intentions.^30,43–48 This research strengthens the theoretical foundation that increasing students' entrepreneurial intentions can be done by implementing entrepreneurship education. Entrepreneurship education should not be limited to business education, but it can start from primary education to higher education with a design that is adjusted to the level of education and the clusters of knowledge being held.

Furthermore, self-efficacy is proven to have a positive and significant effect on entrepreneurial intentions. Thus, this study's results strengthen the research that stated that self-efficacy is positively and significantly related to entrepreneurial intentions.^16,17 When students possess self-efficacy, it helps them to build a belief that enables them to do and achieve things. This belief is what drives the intention to become entrepreneurs. These findings explain that increasing entrepreneurial intentions can be done by increasing self-confidence. Self-efficacy can be built by increasing knowledge about business management through apprenticeships in the business world and successful entrepreneur models.

Moreover, when the self-efficacy variable was used as a moderating variable for the entrepreneurial knowledge variable on entrepreneurial intentions, it was found that self-efficacy did not play a role in increasing entrepreneurial intentions. According to Bandura's¹⁵ definition of self-efficacy, self-efficacy refers to the belief in a person's ability to carry out the necessary actions to produce something. The cause of self-efficacy is not a moderating variable. It can be presumed that the level of self-efficacy is influenced by the level of knowledge about managing the owned business.

Conclusions

This study examined the impact of entrepreneurial knowledge and self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intentions and whether self-efficacy acts as a moderating variable. It also analyzed the level of knowledge, self-efficacy, and entrepreneurial intentions based on gender, ethnicity, and parent's occupation. This study's findings are: (1) Entrepreneurial knowledge and self-efficacy positively and significantly affect entrepreneurial intentions; (2) Self-efficacy is not proven as a moderating variable; (3) The level of entrepreneurial knowledge, self-efficacy, and entrepreneurial intentions did not differ significantly when it was observed between gender, ethnicity, and parents' occupation. Thus, efforts to increase women's role in entrepreneurship won't be too difficult to achieve because the entrepreneurial intentions of women are not lower than the men' as in previous studies. Nevertheless, we need to know the impact of informal education that occurs within the family system. Also, it will be interesting to know the differences that abound in families educating their children based on culture (patrilineal) and parents' work. This study's results cannot be generalized because it only involved one field of science, namely economic education. However, this study provides information on the importance of entrepreneurship education, so as to increase the entrepreneurial knowledge and self-efficacy of women. For this reason, it is necessary to create entrepreneurial education designs that can increase entrepreneurial intentions, especially for women.

Data availability