Abstract:
The entrepreneurship is considered as a key to the ever growing problem of
unemployment, especially in developing countries. The purpose of this study is to
examine the impact of entrepreneurial motivation on self-employment intention.
Entrepreneurship is the second or the last choice of employability among younger
people in Sri Lanka. Contemporary researches have highlighted that the skills of Sri
Lankan graduates are not suited to industrial requirements, and it is imperative to
analyze the lacking part of entrepreneurial motivation. This study is limited to Jaffna
and Trincomalee ATIs with a sample of 270 students. 10% of the population from
each institute was selected using the stratified proportionate sampling method. To
achieve the objective of the study, a quantitative approach was used, and data was
collected through a structured questionnaire and were analyzed using reliability test,
descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and regression analysis. Results of this
study indicated that the entrepreneurial motivation has a significant influence on selfemployment
intention by 48.7%. Results also confirmed that the self-employment
intention of male and female are significantly different at 5% significant level and
average self-employment intention of male is higher than the average intention of
female. Further, the intention of seeking a job in government and private sectors is
significantly different at 5% significant level and average intention of seeking a job
in private sector is higher than seeking a job in government sector. This study
concluded that the motivation towards self-employment will encourage and stimulate
the students to step into entrepreneurial zone rather than searching for alternatives.
