Relationship between Proactive Personality and Entrepreneurial Intentions among Agricultural Students

Early research which focused on the direct effects of personality traits on entrepreneurial intentions and behaviours have been criticized for their low predictive capacity. Recently researchers suggest that personality characteristics may affect entrepreneurial intentions and behaviours via entrepreneurial perceptions and motivational factors. The primary purpose of this study was to incorporate an important personality trait (namely, proactive personality) into the theory of planned behavior to examine the extent to which motivational factors (namely, attitudes toward entrepreneurship and perceived behavioral control) mediate the effects of students’ proactive personality on entrepreneurial intentions. Data was collected using a questionnaire survey from a sample of 300 senior agricultural students at four public universities in the west of Iran. The content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by a panel of experts. The reliability of the research instrument was determined using Ordinal Theta coefficient (θ =0.75-0.82). Structural equation modeling and bootstrap procedure were used to analyze the data. Results indicated that attitudes toward entrepreneurship and perceived behavioral control fully mediate the relationship of student subjective norms, proactivity and entrepreneurial intentions. The findings have implications for explaining attitudes toward entrepreneurship and perceived behavioral control and direct attention on proactivity as an essential competence in the entrepreneurial process. Theoretical and practical implications for entrepreneurial intentions and education are discussed