Big Five Personality Traits and Digital Entrepreneurial Intention: The Mediating Role of Attitude among Entrepreneurship Students in Indonesia

This study examines the effect of Big Five Personality Traits on digital entrepreneurial intention using attitude as a mediating variable in entrepreneurship students in Indonesia. This research is based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) where personality traits are considered background variables that indirectly impact of digital entrepreneurial intention through the formation of attitude. Data were gathered from 128 active entrepreneurship students from many universities in Indonesia with quantitative cross-sectional surveys and analysis by Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS. The results show that attitude towards digital entrepreneurship is highly influenced by extraversion, openness to experience and neuroticism, while agreeableness has a significant and surprising negative effect. Conscientiousness has no important impact on attitude and digital entrepreneurial intention. In line with TPB, attitude is the best predictor of digital entrepreneurial intention (β = 0.710), accounting for 65.5% of its variation. Of the five qualities only openness to experience has a significant impact on digital entrepreneurial ambition whereas attitude considerably mediates the association between extraversion, openness, agreeableness, neuroticism and digital entrepreneurial intention. These findings stress the importance of attitude in influencing entrepreneurial goals and imply the cultural variations of personality-entrepreneurship nexus in the Indonesian context