Author(s): Dr Roberta Fenech, Dr Priya Baguant, Dr Dan Ivanov
The antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions help us better understand, explain and predict entrepreneurial activity. The purpose of this paper is an exploratory study of the entrepreneurial self-efficacy, subjective norms and attitudes of female Emirati entrepreneurs. The theory of planned behaviour is the main theoretical framework utilized in this exploratory study that hypothesizes that entrepreneurial self-efficacy, subjective norms, and attitudes positively affect entrepreneurial intentions that in turn lead to entrepreneurial activity. We test our hypothesis amongst female Emirati business undergraduate students from a Higher Education Institute in the UAE who are currently engaging in entrepreneurial activity. The main finding is that attitudes have the strongest and positive effect on entrepreneurial intentions. Selfefficacy and subjective norms are not found to significantly contribute to entrepreneurial intentions. Our research contributes to the study of entrepreneurship as it uses the theory of planned behaviour in the context of the UAE amongst active entrepreneurs. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.