Influence of psychological factors, political environment and information awareness on entrepreneurial behaviour among youths in Mpumalanga province.

Abstract

Determining the Influence of Psychological factors, political environment and information awareness on youth’s entrepreneurial behaviour in Mpumalanga province is important to foster effective entrepreneurial interest. Although there are many investigations into youths seemingly lack of interest in entrepreneurial participation; however the level of influence of these constructs on entrepreneurial behaviour has not been extensively researched. It is on this premise that this study investigated these constructs to determine its influence on entrepreneurial behaviour and also seek to provide suggestions that can assist government effect paradigm shift in Mpumalanga youths interest in entrepreneurial activities thereby reducing the social vices that comes with high unemployment rate in the province. Adopting pragmatic philosophy and mono-method approach to collect quantitative data to find answers to the research questions with 355 questionnaires administered among unemployed youths in three districts of Mpumalanga province, South Africa. A simple random sampling technique was adopted to draw samples from each of the three major districts and descriptive, inferential analysis was used to analyse data. Regression analysis finds causal relationship between the independent variables (psychological factors, political environment and information awareness) and dependent variable (entrepreneurial behaviour) to see the level of influence on the constructs. The study found a statistical significant relationship between psychological factors and entrepreneurial behaviour, with home stressors and community stressors showing significant statistical agreement to the construct. So also, do political environment and information awareness have significant influence on Mpumalanga youths entrepreneurial behaviour. While psychological factors and information awareness has significant influence on entrepreneurial behaviour; political environment is the main influencer of Mpumalanga youths’ entrepreneurial behaviour. To sum up, the results of the study enabled constructive suggestions that can assist government effect paradigm shift in Mpumalanga youths interest in entrepreneurial activities thereby reducing the social vices that comes with high unemployment rate in the province. Finally, the study outspreads the limits of knowledge in the field of business administration by offering- a four- stage approach suggestion to influence Mpumalanga youth’s entrepreneurial behaviour which includes (a) communication, training and entertainment, (b) Carrot and stick system, (c) Reward mechanism to foster entrepreneurial behaviour (d) Teach-back and feedback system.