MEDIATING ROLE OF SELF-REGULATION BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTION. (EVIDENCE FROM MANAGEMENT STUDENTS)

Abstract

The current study is an attempt to investigate the factors shaping entrepreneurial intention among university students’ namely emotional intelligence and self-regulation. Final year students of business administration program enrolled in various public sector universities of KP, Pakistan comprise a sample size of 352 are surveyed for this purpose. A positivist paradigm concerning quantitative design using adopted questionnaires for assessing the respondent’s emotional intelligence, self-regulation, and entrepreneurial intention is used. Correlation is computed to test relationship-related hypotheses whereas, through PROCESS macros (Hayes, 2013), the mediating role of self-regulation in the relationship of emotional intelligence and entrepreneurial intention is tested. Results revealed that emotional intelligence is significantly positively correlated with entrepreneurial intention. Similarly, emotional intelligence is also found significantly positively correlated with self-regulation; hence, in turn, self-regulation mediates the relationship of emotional intelligence and entrepreneurial intention however the mediation is of partial nature. At the end, study implications, limitations and some directions for future research are also provided.