The Impact of Perceived Behaviour Control and Subjective Norms to Entrepreneurial Intention

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Subjective norms: Subjective norms (SN) measure the perceived social pressure to carry out or not to carry out entrepreneurial behaviours. In particular, it would refer to the perception that “reference people” would approve of the decision to become an entrepreneur, or not (Ajzen 2002). Subjective norms are the attitude that an individual holds about how important referent others or groups approve or disapprove of performing a given behaviour (Ajzen 1991). They measure the perceived social pressure from family, friends or significant others (Ajzen 1991) to perform the entrepreneurial behaviour.

In the families, where the parents are entrepreneurs, they become role models for their children and youngsters. They gain more respect from their wards as they are more experienced and who have given in their best for well- being of their young. All important matters are discussed in family as they work together to achieve their business goal. Parent’s success in running the family business makes the younger generation feel entrepreneurship as an attractive career choice.

In the entrepreneurship literature, several studies found no significant direct relationship between subjective norms and entrepreneurial intention. However, social capital literature finds evidence indicating that this element favourably affect personal attraction and self- efficacy. For example, according to (Ajzen 1991) intention is stronger as long as subjective norms are favourable.

Based on these findings therefore, there are two hypotheses to be tested:

H1: Subjective norms positively influence perceived behavioural control.

H2: Subjective norms positively influence entrepreneurial intention.

Perceived behavioural control: Perceived behavioural control (PBC) is defined as the perception of the ease or difficulty of becoming an entrepreneur. It is, therefore, a concept quite similar to self-efficacy (SE) which “is concerned with judgments of how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations” (Bandura 1982). Nevertheless, recent work has emphasized the difference between PBC and SE (Ajzen 2002).

PBC would include not only the feeling of being able, but also the perception about controllability of the behaviour. Self-efficacy beliefs can influence choice of activities, preparation for an activity, effort expended during performance, as well as thought patterns and emotional reactions (Bandura 1982).

The importance of this variable in the new firm creation process recedes in its predictive capacity, as it reflects the perception that the individual will be able to control the behavior (Ajzen 2002). The resources and opportunities available to a person dictate the likelihood of behavioral achievement. Of greater psychological interest than actual control, is the perception of behavioral control and the impact on intentions and actions. Recent entrepreneurship research suggests that perceived behavioral control is among the most pertinent antecedents to entrepreneurial career intent (Krueger 2000).

Another approach to perceived control can be found in Atkinson’s (1964) cited by(Ajzen 1991) theory of achievement motivation. An important factor in this theory is the expectancy of success, defined as the perceived probability of succeeding at a given task. Clearly, this view is quite similar to perceived behavioral control in that it refers to a specific behavioral context and not to a generalized predisposition.

Similarly, personal skills may also have an effect on entrepreneurial intention(Chen 1998). There is an obvious connection between skills and perceived behavioral control. Thus, those individuals feeling they have a higher level of certain entrepreneurial skills will more probably feel they can create a firm. Besides, it might be argued that a high self-perception regarding entrepreneurial skills would also be associated with more favorable attitudes and subjective norms.

Based on these findings therefore, the first hypothesis to be tested is:

H3: Perceived behavioral control positively influences entrepreneurial intention.

Accordingly, we propose the following model in order to verify our hypotheses in the context of Albanian students (Business Administration and Public Administration, MSc) at university of Tirana, Faculty of Economy (see Figure 1):

Figure 1: Model setup and hypotheses

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Methodology

Participants and Procedures. A model based to Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour is applied (Ajzen 1991). In this sense, the purpose of this study is to examine if the perceived behavioural control and subjective norms influence on entrepreneur intention and what type of correlation exists between those three variables. Our research used a quantitative method, including a questionnaire distributed to students of MSc Business Administration and MSc Public Administration in Faculty of Economy.

This questionnaire was filled up by only 63 students (n=63).The sample consisted of 11 males students (17.46 percent) and 52 female students (82.54 percent) (See table 1). It shows that there are a greater proportion of females in the sample because more females than males attend the course of business at Faculty of Economy, where the data were collected. The students surveyed were told that the questionnaires were for research purposes only and that their answers would not affect their curriculum in any way; participation was always presented as a voluntary choice. The sample selection obtained in the study represents a very small number and it is not randomly selected. The study was restricted to university students. It generated conclusions and recommendations, but these may not be more widely generalizable.

Table 1: Descriptive statistics

Count

Gender

Course

Total

MSHAB

MSHAP

Female

27

25

52

Male

5