The Impact of Cognitive Factors on Entrepreneurial Intention: A Perspective of Hospitality Educational Institutions

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is essential for students to gain knowledge about entrepreneurial skills, attitudes, and intentions. The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of cognitive factors on students’ entrepreneurship intentions at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM). This quantitative study included 217 respondents from six (6) UiTM branches in the provinces that offer hospitality programmes. The data were analysed using partial least squares methods. The current study’s findings reveal that entrepreneurship education encourages hospitality students to become entrepreneurs through the discovery of a positive relationship between entrepreneurship education programmes and students’ entrepreneurship intentions. This finding extends the conclusion of previous studies on the influence of cognitive factors as entrepreneurship education is found to have a positive impact on students’ entrepreneurial intention, especially to start a business. Therefore, there is a need for institutions and educators to deliver learning programmes and extracurricular activities that can arouse and cultivate student interest in entrepreneurship. This approach provides students with the knowledge, attitudes, and skills they will require to start and manage their own businesses. As the hospitality students in the current study concurred that encouraging entrepreneurial intentions requires entrepreneurship education, this study concludes that entrepreneurship education is important in encouraging students to become entrepreneurs in the future.