An Analysis of the Factors Affecting Agripreneurial Perceptions and Intention of Agribusiness Management and Entrepreneurship Students in the University of the Philippines Los Baños
Date
6-2023
Degree
Bachelor of Science in Agribusiness Management
College
College of Economics and Management (CEM)
Adviser/Committee Chair
Jeanette Angeline B. Madamba
Committee Member
Dinah Pura T. Depositario, Normito R. Zapata, Jr., James Roldan S. Reyes, Mar B. Cruz
Abstract
Over the years, the agriculture sector has been disadvantaged and underappreciated by the majority, not only in the Philippines but in all parts of the world. ‘Farming is a poor man’s sector’ and ‘farming is inefficient and outdated’ are only among the stereotypes that are continuously reinforced to individuals due to their limited and negative understanding of agriculture. As a result, recent studies have concluded that the increasing average age of farmers and declining farmer population in the Philippines is mainly because of the decreasing youth participation and discouragement of older generations. This predicament has caused a threat of farmer shortage and food insecurity in the agriculture sector, all the more in the wake of the recent pandemic. However, there are present studies concluding the unique characteristics of Gen Z, expecting them to become the new driving force of food and agriculture. The problem is that much of the recent studies focused on the aspirations of either older generations entrenched with their negative experience in agriculture or younger generations with background only in agriculture which is deemed insufficient since becoming a successful agripreneur requires extensive agricultural background and a substantial amount of entrepreneurial competencies.
Hence, this study probed on the factors at individual, socio-economic, institutional levels as well as the socio-demographic characteristics of the individuals to determine their significant influence on the perception and intention of students towards agripreneurship. Particularly, it identified the factors affecting their agripreneurial intentions, analyzed the mediating effect of perceived feasibility and perceived desirability as well as the direct effect of all factors on agripreneurial intention and suggested strategies on how to better design and deliver agrirpeneurship among univervisities, government units and other related institutions. A survey using stratified random sampling was conducted on 118 ABME students in UPLB through the utilization of Google Forms to determine their general insights and perceptions on agripreneurial ventures. Further, a descriptive and correlational research design was adapted and the information gathered were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Sobel test and simple linear regression. The results of the study were able to present that majority of the students come from Laguna (40.81%) and Metro Manila (21.43%). About 72.03% of the respondents were female. Additionally, around 64.41% have 4-6 household members and 57.14% of the respondents were unemployed which resulted in 59.32% of the respondents having no contribution to household expenses. Moreover, it was determined that none of the socio-demographic variables had a significant effect on the agripreneurial intention of the students. Approximately, 64.41% have seriously considered becoming an agripreneur. Of these, majority expressed their desire to participate in animal (53.97%) and crop production (46.03%). Their motivation is their family, the passion and compassion they have for agriculture and farmers and their urge to find solutions for the ongoing challenges faced by the agriculture. Additionally, sophomore students had the highest percentage of students (71.88%) who have seriously considered becoming an agripreneur, followed by senior (69.70%), freshman (57.58%) and junior (55%).
Furthermore, considering the findings and analysis, it can be concluded that the two propositions presented in this paper which indicated that: (1) “Factors at the individual level, institutional level and socio-economic level significantly influence agripreneurial intention”; and (2) “Perceived desirability and perceived feasibility indirectly influence agripreneurial intention” were not at all true neither were these all false. To be more specific, results showed that perceived feasibility has no mediating effect between the institutional and socio-economic factors and agripreneurial intention. The same results were found on the analysis per strata (student classification). One explanation for this is that students perceived that they are still in the middle of knowing everything and nothing in starting a business, especially coming out of the pandemic where they had limited exposure and experience, thus making it difficult to determine their capacity in starting a business. Meanwhile, perceived desirability has a mediating effect between the individual and institutional factors and their agripreneurial intention. Among all the factors, perceived university support is the highest predictor which lends support to the role of the university on the desire and positive perception towards agripreneurship. With regard to the analysis per strata (student classification), perceived desirability has no mediating effect among freshmen while it has a mediating effect on university support among sophomores, agripreneurial self-efficiacy among juniors and agripreneurial self-efficiacy and perceived behavioral control among seniors. One implication of these varying results is that the preference of students changes over time because as they accumulate more experiences in the university, they get to discover more about themselves, and therefore, they get to develop diverse attitudes and perceptions towards their chosen career.
In addition to these, all of the factors, except for socio-economic conditions and perceived availability and accessibility of government supports and program, had significant influence on agripreneurial intention. This could infer that although the youth acknowledge the programs and support provided by the government to the agriculture
sector, the impact these have had were perceived inadequate by the students. Such insight were supported by the report from OECD (2021) which stated that the budgetary support is clearly ineffective, such that it is inefficient at transferring income to farmers. Also, it is inequitable because it favors large producers and is environmentally harmful as these policies and support were mostly damaging to water quality and biodiversity. On the analysis per strata, results showed that all individual factors (e.g. personal attitude, self- efficacy and perceived behavioral control) significantly influence the agripreneurial intention of all students. However, additional factors were noted to have a significant effect on sophomore and senior students; particularly, factors such as subjective norms, socio-economic conditions, curriculum and content of agripreneurship, agripreneurship experiential learning and perceived university support were found to be significant predictors among sophomores while factors such as subjective norms and experiential learning were found to be significant among seniors
Moving forward, recommendations for different stakeholders were formulated in order to increase students’ positive perception and desire towards agripreneurship which includes increasing participation on agripreneur-related training and workshops among students; conducting more agripreneur-related activities and programs, strengthening the role of academic advisors and continuous research and review of the ABME curriculum by DAME; and increasing scholarship program awareness, raising support and program awareness and developing a more localized participation among the government and related institutions. Finally, further improvements can be made by future researchers by considering the PEC analysis, conducting the study using two or more universities and taking into account the effect of the recent pandemic.
Language
English
LC Subject
Entrepreneurship--Research
Location
UPLB College of Economics and Management (CEM)
Call Number
LG 993 2023 M17 Q55
Recommended Citation
Quilitorio, Sophia Joyce G., "An Analysis of the Factors Affecting Agripreneurial Perceptions and Intention of Agribusiness Management and Entrepreneurship Students in the University of the Philippines Los Baños" (2023). Undergraduate Theses. 11762.
https://www.ukdr.uplb.edu.ph/etd-undergrad/11762
Document Type
Thesis
Notes
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