THE INFLUENCE OF PERSONAL AND FINANCIAL COMPETENCES ON ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTION: MEDIATING ROLE OF PROTECTION MOTIVATION

The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effect of personal and financial competencies on the formation of entrepreneurial intention with the mediating effect of Protection Motivation Theory (PMT). This investigation in terms of purpose is in the category of applied research and in terms of the method of data collection, it is a cross-sectional survey type. The statistical population of the research includes 282 foreign students studying in Tehran University, 183 of them were selected according to Cochran's formula and with the purposeful sampling method available. In order to collect data, a researcher-made questionnaire was used, and to determine its validity, face, diagnostic, and convergent validity were used to determine the extracted mean variance index. In order to determine the reliability of the research tool, Cronbach's Alpha method and composite reliability were used, and the resulting values were at the appropriate level. The findings of the research indicate that entrepreneurial competence has a positive and significant effect on entrepreneurial intention through the mediation of protective motivation, but its effect was not confirmed directly. Also, the results showed that threat assessment and entrepreneurial intention do not have a confirmed relationship; on the other hand, coping assessment has a significant relationship with entrepreneurial intention.