Impact of Big Five Personality Traits on Entrepreneurial Attitude and Intention among Students

Abstract

The research aims at studying the effect of the Big Five personality traits, Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism on attitude and the intention of becoming an entrepreneur among students. Based on a sample size of 200 undergraduate and postgraduate students representing different disciplines, the study uses the descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and simple linear regression to examine correlations between personality variables and the variables of entrepreneurship. Based on its results, we find out that Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Agreeableness impact positively on the variables namely entrepreneurial intentionion and attitude significantly. Neuroticism, on the contrary, shows the high negative effect. Of all the traits, Conscientiousness and Extraversion proved to be the most influential in terms of prediction of entrepreneurial orientation. The observations indicate that the entrepreneurship is psychological in nature and point towards need to ensure that educational institutions train them on personality development and entrepreneurial training to nurture entrepreneurship attitudes and behaviours.In this study, the researcher has added a contribution to the field of personality psychology of entrepreneurship, and also, it can be helpful in practice to those who deal with the education of young people: educators, career counsellors, and policymakers working to develop entrepreneurial skills in younger generations.