Abstract
This study investigates the formation of entrepreneurial intentions in students of tourism and hospitality higher education. Entrepreneurial intensions have been studied extensively in entrepreneurship literature as a predictor of entrepreneurial behaviours for new venture creation, however the entrepreneurial intentions of students in the tourism and hospitality context have been unstudied. Furthermore, as fostering entrepreneurship through the educational system is claimed to be a new mission of universities alongside the traditional goals of research facilitation and knowledge dissemination, understanding how educational establishments effect students’ entrepreneurial intentions is important. This study develops three research questions to identify the drivers of entrepreneurial intentions and the network between its antecedents in tourism and hospitality students.
RQ1: How do entrepreneurial self-efficacy and self-determination for entrepreneurship influence entrepreneurial intentions of T&H students?
RQ2: How do entrepreneurial role models and basic psychological need satisfaction influence entrepreneurial self-efficacy and self-determination for entrepreneurship?
RQ3: How does the context of T&H education and prior work experience in the
T&H sectors influence students’ entrepreneurial intentions?
To understand entrepreneurial intentions from the interplay of values and motivation, this study aimed to investigate motivational antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions including self-determination for entrepreneurship adapted from a comprehensive motivational framework of self-determination theory and entrepreneurial self-efficacy, adopted from social cognitive theory. Moreover, being one of the sources of entrepreneurial self-efficacy through demonstrating successful entrepreneurial behaviours, entrepreneurial role models have been regarded as an important antecedent of entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Additionally, the satisfaction of basic psychological needs namely autonomy, competence, and relatedness are important conditions in promoting self-determination for entrepreneurship. This study also considered differentiating the effects of the types of tourism and hospitality education and work experience on students’ entrepreneurial intentions, thus examining their moderation on the whole structural model.
To explore the mechanisms underpinning the relationships between tourism and hospitality students' entrepreneurial intentions and its antecedents, this study adopted a mixed methods sequential approach conducted through two phases, a quantitative phase in the form of surveys and a qualitative phase through semi-structured interviews. In the quantitative phase, PLS-SEM was used to analyse the theoretical models amongst the constructs using data from 219 survey responses from T&H students in New Zealand. After that, to explore student perceptions of entrepreneurship through the areas that the survey in the quantitative phase could not capture, this study employed qualitative research in a second phase. Thematic analysis was used to analyse data from 16 semi-structured interviews, whose participants were survey respondents in the quantitative phase. The qualitative findings supplemented the understanding of the network of relationships between EI and its antecedents by exploring the mechanisms underpinning their relationships.
This study contributes new understandings to the literature on tourism and hospitality entrepreneurship about the formation of students’ entrepreneurial intentions. More specifically, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and self-determination for entrepreneurship are supported by the results of the study as the primary antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions of tourism and hospitality students. Similarly, the relationships between antecedents, including entrepreneurial role models and basic psychological need satisfaction, are also supported through the structural model analysis. Additionally, this study highlights the differential effects of the types of tourism and hospitality educational approaches on students’ belief of their entrepreneurial self-efficacy and, in turn, influences their entrepreneurial intentions. The differential effects of work experience also influenced how tourism and hospitality students sought support from their entrepreneurial role models, either inspirational or mentoring support. Finally, this study provides an understanding of the mechanisms underpinning the relationships between these constructs through thematic networks including human capital for entrepreneurship, narratives of venture creation, values of entrepreneurship, enterprise familiarisation, and entrepreneurs’ identity.