Identification of Entrepreneurship Intentions and Attitudes of University Students Towards Online Platforms for Financial Independence

Abstract

Online platforms are increasingly being used by young entrepreneurs for the last few years because of affordable access to the business world. University students are a tech-savvy, innovative group of individuals thus, they hold great potential to use these sites as business launching tools. The purpose of the current study was to identify the intentions and attitudes of university students towards online platforms for earning to achieve financial independence. A survey method was employed to select students from various universities, for getting information on their entrepreneurial intentions and attitudes toward online businesses. A questionnaire developed by following the Social Media Attitude Scale by Otrar and Arghin (2015) showing specific metric that get student responses regarding their attitudes on five options 1. don’t know 2. know and want to learn 3. Learning 4. Trying and 5. earning through online platform i.e. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, ebay, Amazon, Twitch, fiver and up-wok etc. The Entrepreneurship Intentions Scale: developed by Sampene et al. (2023) was used to assess students' intentions to participate in entrepreneurial activities. A pilot study was conducted to ensure the reliability of the instrument that showed the reliability index Cronbach Alpha .81. data was analyses by applying descriptive and inferential statistics.  The research revealed that majority of the students were aware of the online platform for earning whereas some don’t know about these platforms. A large number of students are willing and many are trying to learn to earn through these platforms. However only few students are earning through these online platforms. Regarding entrepreneurship intentions results revealed that most of the students have high intentions to become entrepreneur.  Moreover, there are primary trends to understand the functionality and effectiveness of online platforms as a means of earning. On the basis of these findings it is suggested to embed entrepreneurship education in the courses of regular programs and enhance industry academia linkage to increase students understanding about the market demand to get new business ideas for online earning. Ultimately, this will encourage more university students to engage in entrepreneurial activities and achieve financial independence.