Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition Capacity among Agriculture Students at Ilam University

Entrepreneurship capacities development among students in higher education relies on individuals’ capacity to recognize opportunities; because the opportunity recognition is the first step in the process of developing entrepreneurship. Since the perceived entrepreneurial opportunities are the first and most important step in the entrepreneurship process, this study investigates the entrepreneurial opportunity recognition capacity among agriculture students at Ilam University. The sample consisted of 100 senior undergraduate students in agricultural majors at Ilam University, Illam province, Iran, selected through a stratified random sampling technique. The results showed that the perceived entrepreneurial opportunity capacity among students were moderately low. According to structural equation modeling, the entrepreneurial alertness had a positive and significant effect on the entrepreneurial opportunity recognition capacity. Therefore, the findings of this study revealed the importance of the entrepreneurial alertness for predicting the ability to identify entrepreneurial opportunities among higher education students.