The Mediating Role of Entrepreneurial Drive in the Relationship between Personality Traits and Cyber Entrepreneurial Intention
The current COVID-19 pandemic situation has badly affected the world which causes major economic downturn and resulting in the high spike of the unemployment rate. With the Movement Control Order (MCO) being implemented, the need for online-based business has never been more apparent. Nowadays, cyber entrepreneurship has been one of the leading career choices of graduates in Malaysia. Nevertheless, the studies on cyber entrepreneurial intention within the Malaysian context, especially among public university students are relatively scarce. Looking at the previous studies conducted by various researchers, personality traits is one of the prominent constructs in the area of entrepreneurship inclination, but a thorough investigation on the role of personality traits such as pro-activeness and need for achievement on cyber entrepreneurial intention has been insufficient. Furthermore, there is a lack of studies concerning the substantial effect of the entrepreneurial drive as a mediator in the relationship between personality traits and cyber entrepreneurial intention. Thus, the current study was conducted to attend to this issue. A total of 238 undergraduate students from public universities in Malaysia answered the questionnaires. The findings indicated that pro-activeness have no significant effect, while the need for achievement shows a positive effect on cyber entrepreneurial intention. On the other hand, entrepreneurial drive was found to mediate the relationship between need for achievement and cyber entrepreneurial intention but failed to mediate the relationship between pro-activeness and cyber entrepreneurial intention. A detailed explanation of the findings is discussed below.