The Impact of Entrepreneurial Spirit on the Willingness to Start Up via Utilizing Knowledge and Information by College Students: Focused on Self-leadership's Mediating Effect and Regulating Effect of Gender

Since business startups are known to have positive effects on the economic growth of a country, it is necessary to review the factors influencing the willingness to start new businesses for the people to act on business startups. In this regard, the study sought to reexamine the findings of previous research showing that the innovative, initiative, and risk-taking characteristics, which are the constitutive elements of entrepreneurships, influence the willingness to start up. Furthermore, in this study, attempts were made to empirically analyze the direct and indirect relationships of self-leadership influencing the willingness to start new businesses. Consequently, first, it showed that college students’ entrepreneurship has positive effects on the willingness to start new businesses. Second, the significance of the gender of college students was not confirmed as to playing a regulating role in the relationship between entrepreneurship and the willingness to start up. Third, the relationship between self-leadership and the willingness to start new businesses was validated to be significant in a positive direction. Fourth, no mediating effect of self-leadership in the relationship between entrepreneurship and the willingness to start new businesses was observed. Such research results have the following significances. First, while there is an awareness that the concepts of business start- up, entrepreneurship, and leadership carry masculinity, the lack of regulating effect of gender may reflect the changing phases of time and society where women's participation has been increasing. Second, self-leadership is a concept by which one pioneers his or her own life and an influencing factor on the willingness to start up; however, since it has enormous impacts on the entrepreneurship and willingness to start up, relevant mediating effects were not observed and the magnitude of the important influence between entrepreneurship and the willingness to start up were confirmed.