EXAMINING THE MODERATING EFFECT OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ENTREPRENEURIAL SELF-EFFICACY, FAMILY SUPPORT, FRIENDS SUPPORT AND ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTION OF FINAL YEAR FEMALE TOURISM UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN EGYPT

The importance of entrepreneurial activities has become very important in the economies of developing countries which are experiencing problems of joblessness and low productivity, whereby many countries are giving significant attention in developing and promoting entrepreneurial activities as these activities are proven to reinforce economics through job and venture creations, overcoming unemployment problems, and enabling economic progress in most developing countries. And in order increase support for entrepreneurial activities, the best response to these changes in employment and economics is to carry necessary entrepreneurial skills by adopting entrepreneurship education (EE) that may help graduates students to be a job creator than job seekers. Most of the research in entrepreneurship literature has agreed on using the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) in investigating entrepreneurial intention. However, the number of studies conducted in Egypt on the formation of entrepreneurial intention is considerably less prominent in the literature. Therefore, in contributing toward the knowledge scarcity in the literature on female entrepreneurship intentions, The aim of this paper is to empirically identify the moderating effect of entrepreneurial education (EE) on the relation between entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE), social support components which are family support (FS) and friends support (PS) on entrepreneurial intention (EI) among final year female tourism undergraduate students in Egypt. In addition, (TPB) is used as a theoretical framework in this study. The sample of this empirical study consists of 543 final year female tourism undergraduate students from eight public universities in Egypt, whereby, the data were analyzed by using partial least squares (SmartPLS) version 3.2.8. Results indicated that entrepreneurial self-efficacy and family support are determinant of females’ entrepreneurial intention, while friends support was found to have a significant but negative effect on female students’ entrepreneurial intention. Concerning the moderating effect of (EE) results found that entrepreneurship education plays a significant moderating role, by strengthening the entrepreneurial self-efficacy, friends’ support and increase females’ entrepreneurial intention, while EE found to have no significant effect between family support and female (EI). The outcome of this study has necessary implication for females' entrepreneurship literature whereby it suggests that higher education institutions should focus on modifying the female student's attitude through formal entrepreneurship education programs and courses to encourage more entrepreneurial activity.