Business start-up intentions among technical graduates in Tanzania the moderating effect of entrepreneurship education

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of entrepreneurship education on technical graduates’ business start-up intentions. Specifically, it assesses the antecedents of business start-up intentions and how entrepreneurship education moderates the effect of attitudes towards business start-ups, societal-subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control on business start-up intentions. Data for this study were collected from 391 technical graduates who graduated between 2012 and 2017 from technical colleges and universities who lived in Dar es Salaam during data collection. The collected data were analysed using descriptive statistics and Partial Least Squares Path Modelling (PLS-PM). The findings indicate that perceived behavioural control (52.1%) was the strongest predictor of business start-up intentions, followed by attitude towards business start-up (28.9%), and societal-subjective norms (11.5%). Moreover, entrepreneurship education moderated the effect of attitudes towards business start-ups and perceived behaviour on business start-up intentions but not subjective norms. Only 30.2% of technical graduates’ intentions translated into actual business start-ups. Limited start-up funds, perceived high taxes, unfriendly regulatory frameworks, and little awareness of business support services constrained the potential of graduates’ intentions to translate into actual business start-ups. Alongside government efforts to improve the business start-up ecosystem, technical colleges and universities should align entrepreneurship courses with experiential pedagogies to enhance the attitudes of students towards business start-ups and perceived behavioural control as critical antecedents for business start-ups upon graduation.