Financial literacy and entrepreneurial intention: the case of Hue University students

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is increasingly recognized as a vital driver of economic growth and youth employment, yet many Vietnamese university students who express entrepreneurial aspirations fail to translate these intentions into actual venture creation, raising questions about the underlying financial and psychological barriers involved. This study examines financial literacy as a multidimensional construct—comprising financial knowledge, financial attitude, and financial behavior—alongside personality characteristics, entrepreneurial attitude, financial access, digital environment, and subjective norms, in relation to entrepreneurial intention among students at Hue University. We collected survey data from 541 valid respondents across eight member institutions of Hue University and analyzed the data using reliability testing, exploratory factor analysis, and multiple linear regression. We observe that digital environment, entrepreneurial attitude, financial access, financial knowledge, and personality characteristics significantly and positively predict entrepreneurial intention, while financial behavior shows an unexpected negative effect, and financial attitude and subjective norms are non-significant. The findings show that dimensions of financial literacy have heterogeneous statistical associations with entrepreneurial intention and complement the explanatory role of selected TPB-related constructs.