Role of Technopreneurial Self-Efficacy and Perceived Behavioral Control in Shaping Students' Entrepreneurial Intentions

The study aims to narrow a significant theoretical gap in the field of technopreneurship research, which focuses on the interaction between digital capabilities and entrepreneurial intentions in psychological and behavioral ways. The main goal is to investigate how digital readiness affects entrepreneurial intentions, with perceived behavioral control acting as a moderator and technopreneurial self-efficacy acting as a mediator. 400 convenience-sampled Bangladeshi university students provided the data for this cross-sectional, deductive (quantitative) study. The suggested conceptual model was examined using the PLS-SEM analysis tool SmartPLS 4.1. The findings show that the measurement is reliable and valid, and that the structural model can account for 47.3% of the variance in entrepreneurial intention (R² was equal to 0.473). Results showed that entrepreneurial intention (β was equal to 0.503, p-value was less than 0.001) and technopreneurial self-efficacy (β was equal to 0.611, p-value was less than 0.001) were significantly affected by digital readiness. Furthermore, the relationship between entrepreneurial intention and digital readiness is partially mediated by technopreneurial self-efficacy (β was equal to 0.150, p-value was less than 0.001), while perceived behavioral control positively strengthens the link between digital readiness and entrepreneurial intention (β was equal to 0.052, p was equal to 0.043). This study provides empirical evidence supporting the psychological model that relates digital readiness to entrepreneurial intention in technopreneurship.

Technopreneurship, digital readiness, technopreneurial self-efficacy, perceived behavioral control, entrepreneurial intention.

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