Entrepreneurship as a preferred career option Modelling tourism students’ entrepreneurial intention Noor Hazlina Ahmad and T. Ramayah Universiti Sains Malaysia, Minden, Malaysia Imran Mahmud Graduate School of Business, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Minden, Malaysia and Department of Software Engineering, Daffodil International University, Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Mohammad Musa and Johura Jabin Anika International University of Business Agriculture and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh Abstract Purpose – Building upon the theory of planned behaviour and the entrepreneurial event model, the purpose of this paper is to test the effects of the following covariates in predicting entrepreneurial intention among tourism students in Bangladesh, namely, attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control (PBC), perceived desirability and perceived feasibility. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 137 private university students participated in the study by means of questionnaire. The hypotheses were tested using partial least squares (PLS) analysis. Findings – Findings indicate that attitude and subjective norm significantly influence perceived desirability. It was also found that subjective norm and PBC positively influence perceived feasibility. Interestingly also, both perceived desirability and perceived feasibility predict entrepreneurial intention. Originality/value – The study proves the robustness of the integration of the two intent models in explaining entrepreneurial intention in a developing country. The new PLS predict algorithm has been used to generate and evaluate predictions from the path model estimations. Keywords Bangladesh, PLS, Entrepreneurial intention, Tourism entrepreneurship Paper type Research paper Introduction Entrepreneurship refers to the recognition and exploitation of opportunities, which lead to the creation of new ventures (Hisrich et al., 2013). There is growing evidence in the entrepreneurship literature regarding the significant relationship between entrepreneurship, economic growth and poverty reduction; hence, entrepreneurship is deemed to be an effective mechanism for economic development and poverty alleviation (Gielnik and Frese, 2013). Since entrepreneurship development is a potent instrument for nurturing the economic growth of a nation, many developing countries are taking steps to promote entrepreneurship among their people, especially among the younger generation. Bangladesh, being a developing nation, is no exception to this global trend. Entrepreneurship has been earmarked as a tool to fight unemployment and poverty, especially among the youth. According to the National Youth Policy of Bangladesh, the age group of 18–35 years is considered “youth” in Bangladesh, and they are the most productive segment of the total population (Department of Youth Development of Bangladesh, 2015). They comprise nearly 9 per cent of the country’s population and 23 per cent of the labour force. Unfortunately, unemployment is especially dominant among these people (UNDP, 2015). With the increase in public expenditure on education and the increased quality of Education + Training Vol. 61 No. 9, 2019 pp. 1151-1169 © Emerald Publishing Limited 0040-0912 DOI 10.1108/ET-12-2018-0269 Received 27 December 2018 Revised 14 May 2019 24 August 2019 Accepted 9 September 2019 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/0040-0912.htm 1151 Entrepreneurship as a preferred career option