Abstract
Tourism and entrepreneurship have mutually established a fertile ground for developing destinations economy notably creating job opportunities and innovation in tourism and hospitality industry. The present investigation aims to examine constructs ability of Krueger’s (2009) model, an empirically untested integrated model of entrepreneurial intention, in explaining tourism students’ intention of starting up a business. The statistical population consisted of undergraduate and graduate Iranian tourism management students as potential group of entrepreneurs. Using the SEM- PLS method, the current study’s findings contribute to the improvement of entrepreneurial intentions models literature by examining an untested integrated and structural model in the field. The study findings reveal that there is a statistically significant relationship between entrepreneurial intention and the antecedents except the perceived social norms. Also, the findings provide policymakers, academics and tourism practitioners insights into how to cultivate tourism students’ entrepreneurial thinking.
Keywords: Entrepreneurial intention, Tourism students, Intentions model, SEM-PLS
