EPPM, Singapore, 20-21 Sep 2011 MEASURE OF ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTION OF YOUNG ADULTS IN THAILAND Nattharika Rittippant 1 , Wachiraporn Kokchang 2 , Panisara Vanichkitpisan 3 , and Sumonthip Chompoodang 4 Abstract Entrepreneurial Intention (EI) examines both internal motivation to start a new business for personal desires (meaning and purpose in life) and external motivation (monetary reward). Each motivation is influenced differently by demographic, attitude, and aptitude factors. This study focuses on the impacts of attitudes, aptitude, and demographic factors, which have an impact on entrepreneurial intention of young adults in Thailand. The survey sample includes 1,500 participants from Bangkok, northern, southern, northeastern, and central parts of Thailand. We equally divide the number of participant for each region into 300. The questionnaires are delivered to universities in these regions. We conducted surveys with 799 business students and 701 non- business students. We employed the multiple regression analysis to analyze the survey results. Our results showed that all attitude and aptitude factors have the strong relationship with Entrepreneurial Intention. Keywords: entrepreneurial intention, young adult, Thailand Introduction Entrepreneurial intention has emerged as a foremost construct within the entrepreneurship literature over the last few decades (Drennan, Kennedy, and Renfrow, 2005) and continues to be of interest to researchers due to its important to the development for many countries (e.g: Karr, 1985; Hartand Harrison, 1992; Graham and McKenzie, 1995; Mazzarol, Volery, Doss and Thein, 1999; Nabi andHolden, 2008; Ismail, Khalid, Othman, Jusoff, Abdul Rahman, Kassim and Shekh Zain, 2009). The measure of entrepreneurial intention includes influencing factors which focus on demographic variables (Davidsson, 1995), Leadership Effectiveness Analysis (LEA TM , 1987, 1998), the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen,1991), and entrepreneurial skills were measured through a five-item scale, partially based on Denoble et al. (1999). Most of these studies were conducted as research for measuring young adult intention to start business in Thailand. Entrepreneurship has long been the main vehicle of Thai economic growth. However, entrepreneurship in Thailand is hampered due to ineffective enterprise education and a lack of qualified management. The economic crisis in mid 1997 had serious, negative impacts on the Thai economy. Thus, the government and other related agencies initiated several projects and activities to help strengthen and promote entrepreneurship in the country (internationalentrepreneurship.com, 2010, International Entrepreneurship). Thailand is ranked 12 out of 183 economies in the Ease of Doing Business. Thailand eased 1 Lecturer, School of Management Technology, Thammasat University, 131 Moo 5, Tiwanont Road, Bangkadi, Muang, Pathumthani, 12000, Thailand, Tel: +66-2-5013505 Extension 2103, Fax: +66-2- 5013505 Extension 2101. 2-4 School of Management Technology, Thammasat University, 131 Moo 5, Tiwanont Road, Bangkadi, Muang, Pathumthani, 12000, Thailand, Tel: +66-2-5013505 Extension 2103, Fax: +66-2-5013505 Extension 2101, E-mail: natthari@siit.tu.ac.th. 215