Entrepreneurial Intention Determinants Among Female Students. The Influence of Role Models, Parents’ Occupation and Perceived Behavioral Control on Forming the Desire to Become a Business Owner

The study of entrepreneurial intentions has received considerable attention, since intentions have proved to predict entrepreneurial behavior. This paper attempts to shed light on the formation of female students’ entrepreneurial intentions through the mediation of parents’ occupation, role models and Perceived Behavioral Control. According to Ajzen’s theory of Planned Behavior, Perceived Behavioral Control indicates an individual’s perception concerning the ability of performing a specific behavior. An empirical research was conducted on a sample comprised by 952 students from 5 Greek higher education institutions during the academic year 2014–2015 and data were processed with SPSS. Our research findings illustrate that Perceived Behavioral Control and Role Models of female students do influence entrepreneurial intentions. This finding was also confirmed by considering Role Models and Perceived Behavioral Control as Independent variables. Parents’ occupation also has emerged as a cardinal determinant in our study, since students having both parents entrepreneurs expressed a significantly stronger intention to start a business than the ones with only one parent entrepreneur. On the other hand, maternal influence on daughters in the vocational field was not confirmed since female students whose mother was entrepreneur (but the father was not) did not show statistically significant differences from the rest with regard to entrepreneurial propensity. Our research focuses on the impact of female youths’ social context and perception of personal abilities in developing entrepreneurial aspirations. Research results would be beneficial to government bodies and business communities in promoting entrepreneurial spirit, starting from the family. Entrepreneurial education could offer a positive contribution to this end.