Determinants of technopreneurial behavior among university students: the mediating effects of technopreneurial intention and the moderating effect of attitudes

Technopreneurship is the combination of technology and entrepreneurship. Technopreneur is a tech-savvy business owner that has to employ technology throughout the business operations. In the era of technological globalization, technopreneurship has become prominent as it has the potential to develop economic growth; however, it has been reported that entrepreneurial behaviour and attitudes among Malaysians are relatively low. It indicates that there is more space for instilling technopreneurship among young generations. Hence, the study of technopreneurial behaviour among students is very important as they are the future generation involved in the development of the country. Although the government acknowledges the importance of technopreneurial and has put much endeavour in producing a number of technopreneurs among graduates, the number of technology-based business startups among students is significantly low. Technopreneurial studies have been conducted by a few researchers, but to date, only very limited studies are found on technopreneurial especially in Malaysia. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to determine technopreneurial behaviour among university students, the role of technopreneurial intention as a mediator between independent variables of subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and technopreneurial education towards technopreneurial behaviour, and the moderating effect of attitude between technopreneurial intention and technopreneurial behaviour. Hence, this study proposes a technopreneurial behaviour framework underpinned by the Theory Planned Behaviour (TPB). The survey was carried out using a self-administrative questionnaire among public university students, particularly UiTM with 373 respondents through purposive sampling technique. This study employed SPSS version 29.0 for data screening and profiling and PLS-SEM technique through SmartPLS version 4.0 to analyse the data. The results revealed that subjective norms and perceived behavioural control are significantly positive towards technopreneurial intention, while technopreneurial education has no relationship towards technopreneurial intention. Technopreneurial intention also has a positive relationship towards technopreneurial behaviour. For moderating effect, attitude moderates the relationship between technopreneurial intention and technopreneurial behaviour, while for mediating effects, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control have positive relationship towards technopreneurial behaviour as mediated by technopreneurial intention. However, there is no mediation effect of technopreneurial intention between technopreneurial education and technopreneurial behaviour. The discussion of this study contributes to the body of knowledge to further enlighten technopreneurial behaviour as reflected by attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and technopreneurial education, with technopreneurial intention as the mediator.