Impact of some contextual factors on entrepreneurial intention of university students

Entrepreneurship has captured the attention of both scholars and policy makers during the last decades. The main reason for this is the growing needs for entrepreneurs who accelerate economic development through generating new ideas and converting them into profitable ventures. Entrepreneurial activities are not only the incubators of technological innovation, but also provide employment opportunities and increase competitiveness. Fostering entrepreneurship needs a two-fold policy that should focus on both the current situation and future prospect of entrepreneurship. As such, it is important to map out the future context of entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to fill this void by analyzing the impact of some contextual factors on the entrepreneurial intention of university students. To fulfill this purpose, we have proposed a model, which shows some contextual factors that affect entrepreneurial intention. In this model, the entrepreneurial intention is taken as a function of structural, educational, formal networks and informal networks support. This model is tested on a sample of 200 university students in Islamic Azad University, South Tehran Branch.