Asian Social Science; Vol. 10, No.

2; 2014
ISSN 1911-2017 E-ISSN 1911-2025
Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education

Factors Influencing Inclination toward Agriculture Entrepreneurship

among Students in Agriculture Learning Institute
Farah Adila Abdullah1 & Bahaman Abu Samah1
1
Institute for Social Science Studies, Putra Infoport, Universiti Putra Malaysia, UPM Serdang, Selangor,
Malaysia
Correspondence: Farah Adila Abdullah, Institute for Social Science Studies, Putra Infoport, Universiti Putra
Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. E-mail: [email protected]

Received: October 24, 2013 Accepted: November 14, 2013 Online Published: December 29, 2013
doi:10.5539/ass.v10n2p273 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ass.v10n2p273

Abstract
The study has been conducted as a response towards a lack of studies into agriculture entrepreneurship within the
local setting. The main attempt of this study is to determine the factors affecting the inclination toward
agricultural entrepreneurship among students in agriculture learning institute. This is a quantitative study for
which, based on a simple random sampling, a total of 237 students from four agriculture learning institutes were
selected as the respondents. The analyzed data has confirmed that the highest mean score was recorded for social
value, followed by subjective norm, then behavioral attitude, then closer valuation and finally perceived
behavioral control. Based on the data obtained, it is recommended that more studies to be conducted to examine
the influencing factors and the challenges faced by the new generations in Malaysia around agriculture
entrepreneurship.
Keywords: inclination, agriculture entrepreneurship, agriculture development, farmers’ development
1. Introduction
The agricultural sector has been an important one in Malaysia since before the country’s independence, and was
the main contributor to the Malaysian economy during the First National Agriculture Policy, NAP 1 (1984-1991),
which emphasized the policy of expansion and focused on commodity crops such as palm oil and cocoa.
Moreover, agriculture can be a medium for overcoming poverty, one reason being that it has the ability to reduce
the unemployment problem in Malaysia. The effectiveness of agriculture in combating poverty and
unemployment has been proven by the success of a number of high-impact agricultural programs initiated by the
Ministry of Agriculture such as Permanent Food Production Parks (or locally called as Taman Kekal Pengeluaran
Makanan-TKPM), High Impact Project-Aquaculture Industrial Zone (HIP-ZIA), and Agropolitan (Faiz et al.,
2010).
The Malaysian government has continuously encouraged the involvement of youths in entrepreneurship, as it is
in line with the national agenda. As stated in Tenth Malaysia Plan, it is needed for the Bumiputera to enhance
their involvement in Malaysian economy and it will be focusing to strengthen Bumiputera entrepreneurship to
help create competitive businesses in high impact sector. Besides, in Ninth Malaysia Plan, an effective ways will
be undertaken to improve income among smallholders, farmers and fisherman by improving the productivity
within the agricultural subsectors. The local entrepreneurship industry has been further strengthened via the
establishment in 1995 of a ministry called the Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Co-operative Development. In
addition to this, there are adequate numbers of agricultural courses offered by government agencies such as the
Agricultural Certificate Course in Agriculture Institute, the Youth Agriculture Entrepreneur Scheme under
TKPM, agricultural skill courses with the National Agriculture Training Council etc. However, inspite of such
efforts, agriculture entrepreneurship still fails to attract interest from the younger generations, and a number of
causes have been identified. Norsida (2008) has highlighted that first, many youths are not properly informed
about the agriculture courses, and second, entrepreneurship is commonly associated with unstable returns and
profits, and that perhaps youths see agriculture entrepreneurship as being a high risk venture and are deterred by
the risk of failure. Third, as William et al. (2004) highlight, there is a lack of exposure to and relevant
information about the importance of agriculture entrepreneurship and food sufficiency.
Furthermore, one of the challenges facing the agricultural sector is inadequate manpower. In research conducted

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by the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) in 2002/2003 about 39 per cent of farmers interviewed for it were 55
years old and older. A local study completed by MdSalleh and HayrolAzril (2009) has proven that the average
age of farmers in Malaysia is more than 46 years old. In addition, Zaleha’s (2007) study found that a large
number of the farmers in Malaysia were aged 55 years or older, while less than only 26 per cent of farmers were
aged 18-40 years.
The main attempt of this study is to determine the influencing factors in the inclination among students toward
agriculture entrepreneurship in agriculture institutes. Though at the international level, there is abundance of
studies that place their interest on inclination towards agriculture (Pur et al., 2007; Laogun et al., 2000; Ugwoke
et al., 2005; Ogunbameru, 2001; NDE, 2003). However, the similar scenario is hard to see in Malaysia. In
response to this, the researcher has decided to fill the gap and run a research among students in Agriculture
Institute of Peninsular Malaysia as these students are currently undergo two years certificate course in agriculture
and entrepreneurship.
2. Literature Review
Many studies into entrepreneurship have been completed, with some researchers having applied the theory of
planned behavior to their studies. This theory has been applied by Kolvereid (1996) to forecast employment
status choice intentions at Norwegian business schools among first year undergraduate students. Kolvereid (1996)
has accentuated on attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control as the main impingement factors
for intentions. Such findings have been supported by Tkachev and Kolvereid (1999) which confirmed the similar
impingment factors for intention of employment status. Further analysis performed by them have determined that
demographic factors were not correlated significantly to intention of employment status.
Furthermore, Autio et al. (2001) applied the theory of planned behavior to analyze the factors that influence
entrepreneurial intention among university students in Finland, Sweden, the United States and the United
Kingdom. Interestingly, findings by Autio et al. (2001) were in line with studies done by Kolvereid (1996) and
Tkachev and Kolvereid (1999) where attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control were
influential on intention of employment status. Further analysis performed by Autio et al. (2001) have confirmed
that perceived behavioral control have the strongest relationship with intention compared to the other two
factors.
A local study carried out by SitiHawa (2009) into inclination toward entrepreneurship among engineering
students in universities located at the northern region of Peninsular Malaysia has proven that attitude, subjective
norm, perceived behavioral control, closer valuation and social valuation were significant and had a positive
relationship with inclination toward entrepreneurship.
Based on the aforementioned study, theory of planned behavior has been applied in many entrepreneurship
studies. Thus, in this study, the researcher has decided to apply theory of planned behavior and use five
determinants, namely behavioral attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, social valuation, and
closer valuation as the independent variable.
According to theory of planned behavior, there are three determinants-behavioral attitude, subjective norm and
perceived behavioral control-, with an additional determinant, namely social valuation. Behavioral attitude is an
important element that can be assumed to be a person’s interest, which leads them to be inclined toward
entrepreneurship (Santos, 2007). This means that behavioral attitude is dependent on the individual themselves,
and that influences come from the person’s own intentions or interest, without any influences from others.
The second determinant is subjective norm. Subjective norm refers to the social pressure felt by a person, a
pressure that they will either want to act on or not (Ajzen, 1991). Perceived behavioral control, on the other hand,
is a situation in which a person has felt it to be either easy or difficult to perform a behavior. Besides, the
individual’s previous experience has a big impact on that individual and influences whether or not they are going
to be compelled to perform a particular behavior (Ajzen, 1991).
The last determinant is social valuation. According to Zahra et al. (1999), culture plays an important role in
predicting the entrepreneur’s behavior. Social valuation also becomes a basis in a system of a group or
community (Thomas & Muller, 2000). Thus, a system which is based on any values which related to a specific
group can develop the personality of a community with their own ability, normative modeling and perceptions
towards entrepreneurial activity. (Thomas & Muller, 2000).
Social valuation is an added determinant by Linan et al. (2011b) as one of the environmental factors. Based on
social learning theory, Bandura (1997) has stated that behaviors might be resulted from the person surrounding.
North (2005) has provided a different perspective where he accentuated on the environmental factors that

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consists of formal and informal elements have influence on individual intention to involve in agriculture
entrepreneurship. Furthermore, scholars across the globe have looked into the role of cultural variations is to
explain the difference of entrepreneurial behaviors (Davidsson, 1995; Mueller & Thomas, 2000), while Spilling
(1991) stated that culture to be the common ideas, values and norms inside a community. Hence, these values
can influence the entrepreneurial intention among a community to promote a positive attitude toward
establishing a firm (Davidsson, 1995). Thus, the researcher has chosen to add social valuation as one of the
determinants in this study.
3. Methodology
A total of 237 students from four agriculture institutes namely Serdang in Selangor, Ayer Hitam in Johor,
TitiGantung in Perak, and Bumbong Lima in Penang were selected as the respondents for this study. The pilot
study was conducted at Serdang Agriculture Institute, and involved 32 student respondents. However, those
students who were involved as the respondents in the pilot study will not be involved in the actual survey Based
on the pilot study, the Cronbach Alpha values for each construct, namely behavioral attitude; subjective norm,
perceived behavioral control and social valuation are 0.530, 0.760, 0.762 and 0.523 respectively. For every
constructs with the value of Cronbach Alpha less than 0.7, the researcher has restructuring the items to ensure a
clearer sentence. Simple random sampling was applied in this study so that each student has an equal chance of
being selected as a respondent. The instrument used comprised of eight sections, namely as demographic profile,
perception of entrepreneurial course, inclination toward agriculture entrepreneurship, behavioral attitude,
subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and social valuation. Furthermore, the researcher has used the
established instruments by Linan et al. (2011a) and dohas made some adaptations to fit with the current research
on agriculture entrepreneurship while all items are measures using Likert Scale range 1 to 5 which represent
from strongly disagree to strongly agree.In addition, this research is a quantitative study, thus SPSS was used to
run the appropriate analysis. Selected descriptive statistics were performed to describe the general data of the
study.
4. Results and Discussion
The majority of the respondents are male (58.2 per cent) and most of the respondents’ age is between 19-21 years
old. On the other hand, there is a large number of the respondents comes from rural areas with 72.6 per cent.
Furthermore, 63.7 per cent of the respondents have experience in entrepreneurship and majority of them had
experienced 1-12 months in entrepreneurship (Table 1).

Table 1. Demographic profile of respondents

Variables Frequency Percentage Mean SD
Male 139 58.2
Female 99 41.8
Age (years)
19-21 169 71.3 20.75 1.66
22-24 61 25.7
25-27 7 3.0
Place of origin
Rural 172 72.6
Urban 65 27.4
Experience in
entrepreneurship
Yes 151 63.7
No 86 36.3
Experience in
entrepreneurship 9.42 8.85
(months)
No experience 86 36.3
1-12 114 48.1
13-24 28 11.8
25-36 8 3.4
≥37 1 0.4

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Table 2 demonstrates the actual scores for each factor that affects inclination in agriculture entrepreneurship.
Social valuation is the highest mean score (M = 4 .31, SD = 0.58), followed by subjective norm (M = 4.05, SD =
0.67), behavioral attitude, and closer valuation-the lowest mean score was recorded by perceived behavioral
control (M = 3.61, SD = 0.61).
Social valuation recorded the highest mean score due to the influence of not only the community but also the
government by way of its encouragement of youths’ involvement in agriculture entrepreneurship. One of the
programs launched by the Ministry of Agriculture is My Agrosis Club. This program is commonly known as
‘Kelab Usahawandan Siswazah Tani’, and it encourages university students to participate in the field of
agriculture during their study; currently, My Agrosis Club has been extended to the Agriculture Institute in order
to further encourage this. Thus, having such a program has benefitted students and given them valuable
experience in agriculture entrepreneurship.
The next score after social valuation is subjective norm. Based on the score level, it can be concluded that the
majority of students from these four agriculture institutes are encouraged by their social environment to get
involved in agriculture entrepreneurship. The third-highest score is behavioral attitude. Behavioral attitude refers
to the individual’s attitude without any other influences. Besides, there are lots of students whose interest in
agriculture entrepreneurship has developed as a result of the effective courses they attended at their agriculture
institute. Thus, it is proven that the intention to get involved in agriculture entrepreneurship after completion of
their courses are only by themselves and not by other influences.
Lastly, perceived behavioral control shows a moderate mean score of 3.61. This happens because not all students
have entrepreneurial experience in the field of agriculture. Furthermore, those students who have experience in
entrepreneurship are more likely to get involved in agriculture entrepreneurship.
Based on the brief elaboration and data presented in Table 2, it can be concluded that students in these four
agriculture institute(s) are positively inclined to get involved in agriculture entrepreneurship once they have
completed their course of study.

Table 2. Factors affecting inclination toward agriculture entrepreneurship

Factors Frequency Percentage Mean SD
Behavioral Attitude 3.97 0.64
Low (1-2.33) 4 1.7
Moderate
87 36.7
(2.34-3.66)
High (3.67-5) 146 61.6
Subjective Norm 4.05 0.67
Low (1-2.33) 5 2.1
Moderate
68 28.7
(2.34-3.66)
High (3.67-5) 164 69.2
Perceived
3.61 0.61
Behavioral Control
Low (1-2.33) 7 3.0
Moderate
151 63.7
(2.34-3.66)
High (3.67-5) 79 33.3
Social Valuation 4.34 0.58
Low (1-2.33) 1 0.4
Moderate
31 13.1
(2.34-3.66)
High (3.67-5) 205 86.5

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5. Conclusion
This study concludes that the score level of behavioral attitude, subjective norm and social valuation in
inclination toward agriculture entrepreneurship is high among the respondents, with the exception of perceived
behavioral control, which displayed a moderate score level. Within the scope of this study, students of agriculture
learning institutes are quite positive and knowledgeable about agriculture entrepreneurship. In addition,
encouragement and support from family, friends and society would also be helpful in helping youths be more
motivated to move toward agriculture entrepreneurship after completing their studies, while knowledge about the
field itself is also important for those who are interested pursuing a career in it. As the results show, social
valuation is the most influential factor, thus it is proven that the social support and government actions, such as
providing agriculture and entrepreneurship courses and introducing agriculture courses to technical and
vocational schools, and support from other agencies, were helpful in attracting more youths to become involved
in agriculture entrepreneurship.
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