Relationship Between Entrepreneurial Traits and Business Start-Up Intent Among Polytechnics’ Students in Nigerian (A Case Study of North-Eastern Nigeria)

Abstract

Worldwide entrepreneurship indicators indicated that there is a desire to introduce entrepreneurship education early in polytechnics this will assist in mitigating entrepreneurship skills gap among polytechnics students. It is against the background that this study was designed to examine how skills creativity, and innovation that will contribute to effective business start-up intention of polytechnics graduates which will help them to embrace entrepreneurship early and become be self-employed to reduce the cluster of pilling up seeking for a white-collar job. The study employed descriptive survey design; 363 graduating class students constituted the study sample. Three research questions and hypotheses were developed to guide the conduct of this study. Well-designed structured questionnaire was employed to collect primary data for this research. The result was analyzed using table and percentage further multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the hypothesis, multiple regression analysis was also used to access relative predictive power of independent variables against the dependent variables. The result shows that skills, creativity and innovation have a significant positive effect on business start-up intentions among undergraduate students of selected polytechnics in North-Eastern Nigeria. Therefore, study concluded that with a more positive relationship with entrepreneurship and these variables it has a greater chance of success. The study recommended that efforts should be made by various polytechnics to create awareness and help undergraduates to have an interest in entrepreneurship all added on their curriculum to help the student master what is involved in entrepreneurship early and embrace it for better living.