UNIVERSITY BUSINESS INCUBATORS AND STUDENTS' ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTIONS: IMPACT AND EFFECTIVENESS

This study focuses on the impact and effectiveness of University Business Incubators (UBIs) on student's Entrepreneurial Intention (EI). The study is quantitative in nature comprising empirical investigation of relationship between effectiveness of UBIs and student's EI. Primarily, five Pakistan's universities have been targeted which offer entrepreneurship courses and also provide incubation facility to their students to start up their own business idea. Partial Least Square (smart PLS 3) software is used for the data analysis. The paper provides a quantitative analysis of 300 sample size that shows a positive impact of UBIs on student EI. Further, an effective incubation facility provided by a university also influence student's mind and increase EI among them thus, are to be more motivated to start their own business. Moreover, this study also reveals that students who have entrepreneurial family background consume stronger influence over EI than those who do not have entrepreneurial family background. The paper includes implications for universities to gauge success of UBIs and other entrepreneurship facilities provided for business development. Further, it attempts to suggest that UBI can be a better tool in shaping activity of new business creation among university graduates. The contribution of this study is to explain how UBI enhances EI of university students' which ultimately help in economic development through creation of new business start- ups and other entrepreneurial activities.