Family and Environmental Factors Affecting Entrepreneurial Orientation of University Students

The purpose of this study was to investigate some family and environmental factors affecting entrepreneurial orientation of university students. To this end, a sample of 580 students (295 females and 285 males) were selected using multistage cluster sampling technique from seven branches of Islamic Azad University including Marvdasht, Shiraz, Darab, Fasa, Lamerd, Jahrom and Firoozabad branches. The instrument used to collect the data was Kordnaeej's (2007) Entrepreneurs' Personality Traits Questionnaire that was administered to the respondents after ensuring its reliability and validity. The result of the study showed that the mean scores of the respondents on entrepreneurial approaches were higher than average and at an optimal level for the whole questionnaire and its all components except for ambiguity tolerance. In addition, no significant difference was found in the entrepreneurial approaches used by the respondents in terms of their parents' jobs and education level. However, such differences were significant in terms of parents' income and entrepreneurial orientations. In other words, the groups with higher income levels and entrepreneur parents showed more entrepreneurial orientations. It was also found that there was no significant difference between the respondents with and without entrepreneur friends. Besides, the place of residence in city or village had no impact on the respondents' entrepreneurial orientations.