Quit or continue? The influence of demography, challenges and performance

The study of intention to enter into business is more common compared to the intention to exit, but exit is more common than the success in entrepreneurship. The study investigates quit intention among youth entrepreneurs in Ethiopia. The quit intention among existing entrepreneurs is investigated with respect to demography, family situations, business performance, challenges and personal satisfaction derived from the business. A self-reported, validated and reliable questionnaire with Likert scale and binary responses is used to collect primary data from 350 young entrepreneurs within the age group of 18 to 29 years. The tests for mean differences (t test), and Phi/Cramer’s V test were conducted to find differences between factors for long term quit intention. The binary logistic regression test was conducted to find overall impact of factors. The study finds that the gender, prior work experience, enterprise age, family’s occupation, sources of capital, financial challenges, prior training, administrative and legal challenges and social preference for entrepreneurship have statistically significant impact on the quit intention of youth entrepreneur. Interestingly, the study finds that higher level of performance is correlated with higher level of perceived challenges.