COOKING SKILLS AND ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTIONS: MEDIATING EFFECTS OF COOKING PASSION, COOKING TACIT KNOWLEDGE SHARING, AND COOKING SELF-EFFICACY

The eating pattern and changing food choices of Nigerian youths, particularly those in Abuja, are increasingly characterised by eating out. Seventeen years after the introduction of bachelor of science degree in entrepreneurship into the Nigerian universities’ curriculum, it is only natural to think that these graduates who were posted to the capital city of Nigeria for their national youth service corps (NYSC) ought to have started deploying their cooking skills (CSS) to establish mama-puts (unstandardised restaurants) to meet the food needs of the youths who eat out, become self-employed and create jobs. This is not the case, as evidenced by rising unemployment rates among youth and graduates. Hence, this study investigates the mediating effects of cooking passion (CPN), cooking tacit knowledge sharing (CTS), and cooking self-efficacy (CSE) in the nexus between CSS and entrepreneurial intentions (EIS). A cross-sectional research design, a criterion sampling technique, and a census method were adopted to select 187 respondents from a population of 238. The results from SmartPLS with bias-corrected 5,000 bootstrap resamples reveal that the direct and total effects of CSS on CPN, CTS, CSE, and EIS are positive and significant. Also, the indirect effect of CSS on EIS via CPN and CSE is significant, whereas the effect through CTS is non-significant. Thus, the acquisition and utilisation of cooking skills can trigger “mama put” formation and job creation among graduates and non-graduates through passion for cooking and self-efficacy. The study concludes by shedding light on the theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and future research directions.