Impact of role models on the entrepreneurial intentions of engineering students

This paper reports the impact of role models on the entrepreneurial intentions of engineering students in Hong Kong. The research is based on theory of planned behavior (TPB) and empirical data of 411 engineering students from three universities. The results reveal that, no matter students took an entrepreneurship course or not, there are significant differences in entrepreneurial intentions between students with and without role models like entrepreneurial parents, relatives or friends. In other words, our local entrepreneurship courses do not compensate for the lacking of role models. Implications for designing new entrepreneurship courses will be explored.