Introduction
Background
Studies have attempted to identify factors that impact the attitudes of youths toward entrepreneurship in the UAE. Entrepreneurship is the best remedy to the unemployment issue and economic development since many youths venture into Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) (Mohammed, 2019). According to Al-Sartawi et al. (2019), entrepreneurship is one of the most significant economic forces in recent years. However, it is necessary to draw up a specific program, addresses such important factors as the current generation’s thought process and their expectations. (Pathak, 2019). The UAE has been seen to possess a large population of youths over recent years. The growing youth population prefers to work in the public sector, also because private companies often hire foreigners for less pay (Al Saiqal, 2015). Nevertheless, youths are the future decision-makers, adults, leaders, and business operators. Therefore, their contribution towards entrepreneurship through investments poses a right bearing on the future of the UAE’s business relations. Studies have shown that the presence of existing business organizations may set the trend for similar entrepreneurial startups in the future. (Pathak, 2019). Investigating the attitude of youths towards entrepreneurship in UAE is significant in studies related to it. Entrepreneurship offers a transformational passage that aims to achieve and attain the sustainable and diversifiable goals that are deemed to yield development.
Attitude can be seen as a psychological set of beliefs, emotions, and behaviors related to entrepreneurial activities. Youth refers to an individual who is in the transition period from childhood dependence and independent adulthood. The attitude can be resulting from either upbringing or experience and bears a stronger influence on a youth’s behavior (Ashour & Hui, 2016). Thus, it is important to give young people a proper upbringing to shape their lives.
An entrepreneur refers to an individual who can use the potentially available resources in a suitable form possible to have exceptionally perfect performance. An entrepreneur should, therefore, be knowledgeable, possess financial aid, and have proper relating skills. Entrepreneurship is the ability to take advantage of the resources at your disposal by combining them with smart strategies to avoid failure (Gilliard, 2018). Alternatively, it can be an attempt by an individual or a group of persons to formulate new ideas for a business or create an avenue for the expansion of a business that already exists (Mohammed, 2019). The entrepreneurial network and competition are powerful tools and drivers of the state’s economic growth (Prasetyo, 2019). Therefore, entrepreneurship is an avenue for introducing a new competitive strategy that will contribute to productivity.
Objectives
The objectives of this study are:
- To study the attitude of youths toward entrepreneurship in the UAE;
- To assess youths towards the UAE business environment;
- To determine whether the youths in the UAE are aware of entrepreneurial business opportunities suitable for them;
- To determine whether the youths in the UAE have access to socially available networks and are willing to take risks and start a business.
Literature Review
studies have been conducted to determine whether there exists any difference in the entrepreneurship intents among female and male students. Findings reveal that male students are more inclined toward starting a business, although the differences between the sexes are mainly related to cultural characteristics (Jagannathan et al., 2017). The tendency of being future entrepreneurs is not dependent on gender; rather, it depends on motivation, awareness, and creativity among the students (Ashour & Hui, 2016). Furthermore, the research suggested the creation of transparent and innovative government practices that would increase the degree of youth trust in government institutions (Adarsh & Jayashree, 2020). The strategies informed on government’s perception of its plans for the young people.
Various research have been conducted to increase the knowledge of young people’s perception of careers. According to the study that was performed on the career and perception choices associated with the entrepreneurial intentions of UAE youths, the male participants had a higher stress-handling capacity than the females (Ashour & Hui, 2016). Furthermore, differences were evident between the genders. This was an indication of the existence of high entrepreneurship intentions, participants’ attitudes, and experience.
Various researches have measured students’ entrepreneurial intentions covering the regions of Al Dhafra, the UAE, and Abu Dhabi. According to these studies, there exists a stronger association between entrepreneurial intentions and the factors such as perceptions (Mohammed, 2019). Furthermore, the participants were empowered in this study, which boosted their morale to participate in entrepreneurship.
Methodology
Research Questions
The research questions to be answered by this study are
- Does the youths’ attitude towards entrepreneurship in the UAE have any relationship to other perceived factors such as age, educational level, or gender?
- Are the attitudes of the youths in the UAE towards entrepreneurship associated with the business environment?
- Are the UAE youths’ awareness of entrepreneurial business opportunities suitable for them within the market have any relation to their attitude towards entrepreneurship?
- Do the youths in the UAE have access to socially available networks that have any effect on their attitude?
- Are UAE youths’ willingness to take risks and start a business associated with their attitude towards entrepreneurship?
Research Design
The study will use a quantitative method to answer the research questions. The following table summarizes the methods used to answer each question:
Table 1. Methods Used to Answer Research Questions
Instruments
To effectively determine the suitable research methods related to the case of the student taking a business course, a reference was made according to Sanders, Lewis, and Thornhill’s (2019) study. This research was conducted using the quantitative approach, which would allow the provision of solutions to the research questions. The design allowed for the development of questionnaires to be presented to the study participants. The questionnaire had two sections: participants’ personal details, attitude towards entrepreneurship, and willingness to indulge in entrepreneurship (Mohammed, 2019). The designed questionnaire used the five-point measurement of the Likert scale with the highest value, five represented as strongly agree while the lowest value represented as strongly disagree.
Sample
The study population mainly consisted of youths in their high secondary and second-year levels from one of the UAE’s leading public universities and public high schools. Initially, 200 youths were selected, out of which only 100 valid questionnaires were returned (response rate of 50%). Sample selection followed, where the random selection was applied based on the youth’s school. The representative group per school was selected randomly from a choice of institutions of learning offering business-related studies. The youths were aged between 15-and 24 years.
Data Collection
For this research, volunteers who are conversant with the English language were used in administering the questionnaires. The volunteers incorporated the primary data technique of collection of data since the study aimed to measure youths’ attitudes toward entrepreneurship in the UAE, and it required raw data that was suitable for addressing the issues.
Data Analysis
The quantitative gathered data was analyzed using Excel since the technique applied during data collection was quantitative. The applied methods in the research included linear regression and correlation. Furthermore, frequency analysis was vital since it would test the interpretation and assessment of responses obtained from the youths participating in the study. The number of respondents was 100. The descriptive statistic data was represented, as shown in Table 2.
Table 2: Respondents Descriptive Statistics
Limitations
The study fails to consider other factors that may affect youths’ attitudes toward entrepreneurship in the UAE. These factors include environmental conditions, economic, demographical, and cultural practices. The size of the sample of the participants in the study is small. One hundred youths will not give a perfect generalization of the study’s findings, leading to the need to take up more people to give the study a sample representative of the entire population.
Results
Research Questions
Results relating to the research questions of the study are represented in Table 2.
Figure 1 represents a chart of the respondents’ total number as per the formulated research questions.
Testing whether there is an association between age group, gender, and level of education, and attitude of youths towards entrepreneurship in the UAE.
Discussion
Figure 1 shows that youths’ attitude toward entrepreneurship in the UAE has a positive relationship to other perceived factors such as age, educational level, or gender. Furthermore, UAE youths’ willingness to take risks and start a business is associated with their attitude towards entrepreneurship. According to Figure 1, unwillingness is evident because the number of youths not interested in engaging in entrepreneurship is higher.
Further results from the regression analysis indicate that youths’ attitude toward entrepreneurship in the UAE has an association with perceived factors such as age, gender, and level of education. The existing association is validated by the fact that both the p-value and f-statistic values are greater than their significance level of confidence, respectively, that is, 1.2310>0.348 and 0.118>0.05. Therefore, the youth level of education in the UAE has encouraged them to indulge in entrepreneurship.
Recommendation
- Future related studies should consider and investigate other factors such as environmental conditions, economic, demographical, and cultural practices that impact youths’ attitudes toward entrepreneurship in the UAE.
- An exploration of this study with larger sample size is recommended. Other complex statistical analysis techniques such as SPSS should be incorporated to yield an exhaustive analysis of the youths’ attitudes towards entrepreneurship in the UAE.
- This study should also be expanded to other UAE neighboring countries or through the Middle East to compare youths’ attitudes in different countries.
References
Al Saiqal, N. Y. (2015). Entrepreneurial intentions of UAE youth: A work in progress. In ICSB World Conference Proceedings (p. 1). International Council for Small Business (ICSB).
Al-Sartawi, A. M. M., Badawi, S., Hanoon, A., Hamdan, A., Reyad, S., & Razzaque, A. (2019). Entrepreneurship Education and Country Competitiveness: Avenues for Future Research in the Arab Countries. In European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (pp. 59-XXIV). Academic Conferences International Limited.
Ashour, S., & Hui, S. K. F. (2016). Social and business entrepreneurship as career options for university students in the United Arab Emirates: The drive–preparedness gap.Cogent Education, 3(1), 1-18. Web.
Gilliard, T. (2018). Entrepreneurial opportunities to develop strategies for small business success (Publication No. 10790990). [Doctoral dissertation, Walden University]. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
Jagannathan, R., Camasso, M. J., Das, B., Tosun, J., & Iyengar, S. (2017). Family, society and the individual: Determinants of entrepreneurial attitudes among youth in Chennai, South India.Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, 7(1), 1-22. Web.
Mohammed, D. (2019). Measuring student’s entrepreneurial intentions: The study of Al Dhafra region, Abu Dhabi, UAE. International Journal of Entrepreneurship, 23(3), 1939−4675.
Pathak, S. (2019). Future trends in entrepreneurship education: Re-visiting business curricula. Journal of Entrepreneurship Education, 22(4), 1-13.
Prasetyo, P. E. (2019). Role of entrepreneurial culture as the driver of economic growth.International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, 9(3), 237. Web.