Factors Influencing Technopreneurial Intention among Undergraduate Engineering Students in the Philippines

: In the Philippines, students exhibit a low interest in entrepreneurship despite numerous programs implemented and mandated by the government. The emergence of technopreneurship is now confronted by several issues, mainly in developing competent and versatile technopreneurs. Until now, there are inadequate studies related to technopreneurship specifically those dealing with technopreneurial intention among engineering students. This study aims to determine the factors associated with technopreneurial intention. Simple random sampling was used to collect necessary data from 200 undergraduate engineering students from selected universities in the Philippines. Multiple Regression Analysis and Pearson Correlation Analysis were used to test the hypotheses and examine the relationship between independent and dependent variable respectively. The findings revealed that among the five identified factors, only Computer Ability, Access to Capital, and Entrepreneurial Experience have a significant and p o s i t i v e e f f e c


Introduction
Through the years, the Philippine government has developed a variety of methods to assist and encourage youth involvement in technopreneurial activity.Particularly, the partnership between the Department of Science and Technology (DOST,) University of the Philippines (UP), and the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) established the DOST-UP Enterprise Center for Technopreneurship in 2011 which aimed in assisting young entrepreneurs to taking the first steps toward establishing their enterprises through technopreneurship courses, grant application support, product testing, and tailored business support (DOST-PCIEERD, 2012).Aside from the diligent effort of the Philippine government through institutions like DOST and DTI, there are some private organizations that wish to offer ambition to underprivileged youths and university students with possibilities for self-determination in social and economic participation via entrepreneurship.Youth at Venture Philippines is a private, non-profit organization that helps disadvantaged, motivated, and passionate youth and university students with entrepreneurial mindset gain or improve their k n o w l e d g e , s k i l l s , an d at t i t u d e s t o w a r d s entrepreneurship.
Additionally, it is worth noting that graduates of universities who start their businesses help the government reduce the responsibility of producing public-sector job possibilities (Singhry, 2015).Moreover, because of the unfavorable economic conditions following the COVID-19 pandemic, employment has been a challenge for youth and fresh college graduates.Although the Philippine government is eager to make attempts, not many Filipino youths regard entrepreneurship as their professional choice.Statistics have shown from a study that out of 5,953 youths, 86.12% were salaried and classified into Permanent Employment, Short-Term, Work on different jobs daily or week to week, and unclassified.In contrast, 248 or 4.17% are unemployed, and only 578 or 9.71% were selfemployed.From this it can be interpreted that most y o u t h s a r e m a i n l y e m p l o y e d r a t h e r t h a n entrepreneurial (Gozun and Rivera, 2019).
The term "technopreneurship" refers to a new breed of entrepreneurship that is technology-based.As a result, it confronts various problems in training and developing competent technopreneurs (Jusoh & Halim, 2006;Tan, Karl & Mohamed, 2010).It entails bringing individuals together who are intelligent, determined, innovative, tech-savvy, enthusiastic, and w i l l i n g t o t a k e m e a s u r e d r i s k s .U n l i k e entrepreneurship, Technopreneurship is rarely a oneperson show as the team's success depends on how effectively they work together.The concept of e n t r e p r e n e u r s h i p c a n a l s o b e a p p l i e d i n technopreneurship, where the greater the person's intention to become an entrepreneur, the more likely they are to succeed (Hisrich, Peters & Shepherd, 2017).However, only few researchers have dealt with technopreneurship as most studies tend to focus on the conventional type of entrepreneurship.Additionally, the scarcity of literature has created a void in our u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f t h e f a c t o r s p r o m o t i n g technopreneurial purpose.Thus, the objective of this study will determine the characteristics that may impact engineering students' inclinations toward technopreneurship.

A. Computer Ability
An analysis of the relationship between computer ownership and entrepreneurship at the individual level provides evidence that individuals with access to home computers are substantially more likely to become entrepreneurs over the following 12-15 months (Fairlie, 2006).From Buckley and Montes' (2002) study, majority of businesses make relatively large investments in computers and communication equipment.This is because exposure to computers make it substantially easier for a potential entrepreneur to create an experimental business plan, obtain information, research competition, and lower operating and marketing costs.Computer Ability such as using spreadsheets, word processing, and database programs, are valuable for creating and managing entrepreneurship.

B. Internet Ability
According to Bandura (1986), self-efficacy deals with "how people evaluate their ability to obtain a certain type of performance by planning and accomplishing the courses of action needed.Skills and knowledge in Information Communication Technology (ICT) are crucial in technopreneurship specifically for relaying and acquiring important information to maximize business opportunities (Watson, 2016)

C. Individual Entrepreneurial Orientation
According to Bolton (2012), Individual EO would be valuable at a collective level, which includes resourcefulness, dynamic, and courage, which may be possible by extending it to the level of individuals.In addition, the three components of EO were connected to a student's desire to its intent in pursuing entrepreneurship.Certainly, a person's willingness to take risks and tolerance for risk affected their entrepreneurial ambitions (Yurtkoru, Acar & Teraman, 2014).It was also discovered that Malaysian students' inclination for risk-taking was linked to their desire to engage in entrepreneurial activity (Embi, Jaiyeoba & Yussof, 2019).Additionally in Abdulgani's study (2016), personal attributes, enthusiasm, entrepreneurial and commercial enterprise abilities which are connected to an individual's preferences, mentalities, inclinations, and ability to recognize and seize the great opportunity, have been identified to affect the emergence of technopreneurship.

E. Access to Capital
From Aragon-Sanchez, et al. (2017), the capacity of economic, personal, and material support was observed in response to individuals' decisions to establish new businesses and their succeeding sustainability, development, and revenue growth.Entrepreneurial inclinations are usually instilled in children from affluent households since the youth are already able to recognize the importance of economic resources in a company's success.Thus, university students are expected to understand that a financial constraint reduces the probability of success and increases potential risk, hence lowering the value and viability of pursuing the objectives.

A. Data Collection
Due to the presence of COVID-19, the Philippine Government has enforced a lockdown that require the people to stay at home (Dizon, 2020).As a result, the researchers have gathered the data during the COVID-19 pandemic through an online questionnaire with the use of Google Forms which was distributed using different social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and relayed the questionnaire in different group chats via Facebook Messenger.The population of this study were engineering students from State Universities in Metro Manila that offer a variety of engineering courses such as Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), Rizal Technological University (RTU), Taguig City University (TCU), and Technological University of the Philippines -Taguig Campus (TUP-T).The student participants have also took up the course Technopreneurship 101 as mandated by CHED to all Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) throughout the Philippines that provide engineering programs.The researchers used a five-point Likert scale questionnaire (1=Very Unlikely to 5 = Very Likely), and the respondents were requested to input their answers on self-administered survey forms, which were sent online with the use Google Forms.To guarantee the credibility and efficacy of the items, the questions were adopted from past research (

A. Data Analysis
With the use of the software Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), the researchers were able to employ a quantitative approach by examining the relationships between independent variables, and independent variables to dependent variables with the use of Pearson Correlation Analysis.The researchers also conducted Multiple Regression analyses to test the hypotheses in this study.The table of Regression Coefficients, Model Summary, and F value from ANOVA will be used to determine the outcome of the study.

B. Demographics
The researchers successfully collected 200    From the results of Pearson Correlation Analysis, the correlations between all independent variables were moderately positive and significant.While reliability analysis shows that the questionnaire items of independent variables and dependent variable ranges from Good to Excellent.
The values correlation coefficient (r) for independent variables ranges from (r=.596; sig <0.01; IA to AC) as the lowest, to (r=.696; sig <0.01; EE to AC) as the highest.Moreover, the independent variables (CA, IA, EO, EE, AC) were all moderately positive and significant to the dependent variable (TI).The highest correlation was found between AC and TI (r=.667; sig <0.01) while the weakest correlation was found between EE and TI (r=.528; sig <0.01).Since none of the calculated values of r were higher than 0.9, the results show that there is no multicollinearity between the variables (Pallant, 1996).Furthermore, the values of Cronbach Alphas ( ) ranges from α ( =0.794; IA) as the lowest, too ( =0.942; EE) as the α α highest and shows internal consistency on all items from Good to Excellent.

E. Pearson Correlation Analysis
Multiple Regression Analysis was used to test the five hypotheses to determine which predictors are significant to the technopreneurial intentions of engineering students, and the results are indicated in Table VII.

Fig. 2: Multiple Regression Results
In table XI, it shows that the overall study model was statistically fit (F statistics = 62.086; sig.<.001) by having a large value of F. The R2 = 0.565 indicates that 61.5% of the variance of technopreneurial Intention was explained by the predictors (Computer Ability, Internet Ability, Entrepreneurial Orientation, Entrepreneurial Experience, and Access to Capital).The results show that, the Computer Ability (β=.285; sig.= <.001), Entrepreneurial Experience (β=.258; sig.= <.001), and Access to Capital (β=.214; sig.= <.001) significantly affect the intention towards technopreneurship with a positive correlation.As a result, the hypotheses H1, H4, H5 were accepted.

F. Findings
After data analysis, the researchers interpret the data for each school.Entrepreneurial Orientation (sig.=.041) was the only factor that influences technopreneurial intentions for engineering students from PUP.While engineering students from RTU indicated that Computer Ability influences intention t o w a r d s t ec h n o p r e n e u r s h i p ( s i g .= 0 .0 0 6 ) .Additionally, results show that Computer Ability and Access to Capital were the most influential factor in technopreneurial intention of TCU students with a score of (sig.=0.29) and (sig.=0.16), respectively.Lastly, engineering students of TUPT believe that Entrepreneurial Experience is the sole factor that promotes technopreneurial intention with a score of (sig.=0.005)Overall, three factors have been identified to have a significant effect to the intention towards technopreneurship of engineering students from selected universities, namely: Computer capability, Access to Capital, and Entrepreneurial Experience with a score of (sig.= <0.001)for all.As for the rankings, from the coefficient table ( (Okorie et al., 2014).In addition, the government should initiate and provide programs such as funding and granting capital that will support aspiring students who have interest to venture technopreneurship.

Conclusion
The researchers conclude that the Computer Ability, Access to Capital, and Entrepreneurial Experience of an individual significantly affect an individual's technopreneurial intention while the Internet ability and Entrepreneurial Orientation are statistically insignificant.
Consequently, this study not only supports the statement of Hoque et al. (2017) that the self-efficacy of an individual had a substantial and favorable effect on their intention to pursue careers as technopreneurs, but also add another predictor (Computer Ability).The findings of this research further support the study of Aragon-Sanchez et al. (2017) that students with b et t er ac ces s f i n an ci al l y h av e a st r o n g er technopreneurial intent not just on secondary students but also to the tertiary students On the other hand, the results also imply that most of the engineering students are literate in creating documents in word processors but lack in programreading.Families of these individuals will most likely encourage them in creating a business than providing financial support when they start a business venture.Also, they agreed that having knowledge of the business allows them to feel at ease at their job because they understand how it operates.
. Students with adequate IT abilities and real-world experience in starting IT enterprises w o u l d b e m o r e s u c c e s s f u l i n I T-r e l a t e d entrepreneurship.Moreover, the self-efficacy in terms of internet and computer are connected to the internet's perceived usefulness and the individual desire to use technology (Aesaert et al., 2015; Courtois et al., 2014; Ong & Lai, 2006)

D
. Entrepreneurial Experience According to (Kautonen et al. 2011), an individual's work experience and educational background have become the focus of attention of research in developing Entrepreneurial Intention.A better understanding of how Etrepreneurial Intention is influenced by an individual's type of work was derived from previous studies that analyze the difference between individuals with different work experiences (Zapkau et al. 2015).Scholars have also recommended prioritizing this type of experience and analyzing whether it is converted to knowledge (Politis, 2005), particularly, considering the concept of Entrepreneurial Experience as a factor that will describe the variation brought about by an individual's background in building Entrepreneurial Intention (Miralles et al. 2016).
B. Theoretical Framework The research framework of the study was based on the study of Alias, Arham, Koe, Krishnan, & M a h p h o t h ( 2 0 2 1 ) o n f a c t o r s i n f l u e n c i n g technopreneurial intention.It became a driving factor for the researchers to find out the outcome in different populations with additional factors, which are also believed to be also significant.Each factor was gathered from a variety of other academics' investigations which lead to the development of the study's research model.It adopted the concept of an individual's orientation, resources, experience, and self-efficacy.This study determines whether the factors (Computer Ability, Internet Ability, Entrepreneurial Orientation, Entrepreneurial Experience, and Access to Capital) impact an individual's technopreneurial intention.C. Hypothesis Utilizing the theoretical framework presented in this study, the researchers identified the relationship of independent factors to the dependent factor: H1: Intention towards technopreneurship is positively influenced by computer capability H2: Intention towards technopreneurship is positively influenced by Internet Ability H3: Intention towards technopreneurship is positively influenced by Individual EO H4: Intention towards technopreneurship is positively influenced by Entrepreneurial Experience.

Table 4 :Pearson Correlation Analysis And Reliability problem
(x̄=3.86).Lastly, in terms of financial access of the engineering students, they score the highest in item AC02, where an individual's family business can be a factor for them to create a new venture (x̄ =4.11), while they rated lowest on item AC01, where an individual will most probably receive financial support from their family when they start a business (x̄ =3.875).

Table XI
With the collaboration initiated by CHED and a non-profit organization in the Philippines, Technopreneurship 101 was established to encourage science and engineering students to pursue entrepreneurial and Research & Development career opportunities.The program is based on PhilDev's entrepreneurial courses, which encompasses subjects including entrepreneurship fundamentals, conceptual design, feasibility and distinctiveness, market analysis, and company strategy development.They also introduced Technopreneurship 101 at all 539 Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) throughout the Philippines that provide engineering programs.The government's responsibility in developing various technopreneur should really be addressed.The authorities should be the driving force behind the country's development of technopreneurship.To illustrate, government initiatives in encouraging technopreneur include creating a favorable market environment and implementing the tactical and systematic method