The purpose of this chapter is to extend the research on determinants of entrepreneurial intentions in the agricultural industry by using the theoretical framework of determinants of entrepreneurial intentions and entrepreneurial event model. By employing the DEI and EEM, the researchers evaluate how perceived desirability, perceived feasibility, individual background, and triggering events can influence the attitude of an individual and in turn how entrepreneurial attitude can control entrepreneurial intentions. To achieve the objective, a questionnaire survey was held using the sample of 335 PhD, master, and bachelor students in commerce, business, and economics from an Indian central university. The data was analysed using a linear regression model. The findings advocate that perceived desirability, perceived feasibility, individual background, and triggering events are positively related to entrepreneurial attitude, and the entrepreneurial attitude positively and significantly influences entrepreneurial intentions in the agricultural sector.
TopIntroduction
India is the second most populated country, of which a large amount of population is unemployed. As per ILO reports, there is an expected rise of 0.6 million in the number of unemployed persons in India in the year 2019. India ranks second worldwide in farm outputs. “The history of Agriculture in India dates back to Indus Valley Civilization era and even before that in some parts of southern India” (Brese & White, 1993). As per 2018, 50% of the Indian jobs were created by agricultural sector and has contributed 17-18% to the GDP of the country (Sundar, 2019). But interestingly as per the reports of CMIE, during 2018 there was an increase on employment among urban men by 500000 jobs, whereas the rural men lost 2.3 million jobs(Vyas, 2019). This process is dominated by the increasing number of unemployed youth. As we know the people living in rural areas are more inclined towards agricultural activities, hence it is necessary to supplement the human resource productivity in agricultural sector through agricultural entrepreneurship.
In agricultural sector the youth interest is decreasing year by year, in addition many of them who primarily depend on agricultural activities are mostly small scale farmers and are facing low productivity. So there is a need to involve creative, dynamic and young generation to develop this sector through entrepreneurial activities. Now what drives entrepreneurship is a debatable question (Shane &Venkataraman, 2000;Stevenson &Jarillo, 1990). Entrepreneurial intentions and cognitions have captured a pertinent place in research for setting up a new business venture (Krueger,1993;Krurger,2000;Bird &Schjoedt,2009). Shane (2007) and Fitz-Koch, Nordqvist, Carter, & Hunter, (2018) argues that there is the requirement of in-depth study so as to understand how and why Entrepreneurs identify opportunities and create new ventures.Surprisingly on EI only a few studies (Roy, Akhtar, & Das, 2017; Giacomin, Janssen, Pruett, Shinnar, Llopis, & Toney, 2011; Pathak & Wang, 2012;Kar, Subudhi, &Padhy 2017; Arafat, Saleem, Dwivedi, & Khan, 2018; Arafat, Saleem&Dwivedi, 2020) had been held in Indian setting.Moreover, the existing literature also shows that among the studies in the agricultural sector less attention has been paid towards new venture creation aspect (Arafat et al., 2018). The available literature on the subject of Entrepreneurial behaviour portraits that there are very few studies focusing on Agricultural Sector (McElwee 2006; Brunjes& Revilla 2013; Arafat et al., 2018). Number of studies were held among university students i.e. (Marques, Ferreira, Gomes, & Rodrigues, 2012