The moderating role of entrepreneurship education in shaping entrepreneurial intentions

Abstract

Few studies investigated the role of entrepreneurship education in students’ entrepreneurial intentions. These studies produced controversial results which invited the attention of researchers for further investigations. This paper examines the moderating role of entrepreneurship education on the predictive value of attitude, subjective norms and self-efficacy for entrepreneurial intentions. True Experimental Design (post-test-only control group design) is used to investigate the change in the nature and magnitude of the impact of independent variables (personal attitude, self-efficacy and subjective norms) on the dependent variable (intentions) using entrepreneurship education as a moderating variable. Data were collected from the treatment group (completed entrepreneurship course) and control group (not taken entrepreneurship course) from various higher education institutions in Oman. Total 500 questionnaires were distributed, out of which 204 filled questionnaires were received back in which 196 qualified as valid responses. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses. The statistical relationship among the modeled variables was estimated using Partial Least Square method. The results revealed that attitude toward entrepreneurship, subjective norms and self-efficacy are the significant predictors of entrepreneurial intentions. However, entrepreneurship education moderates this relationship by strengthening the path coefficients of attitude toward entrepreneurship and self-efficacy. Same time it weakens the path coefficient of subjective norms.

Influence of entrepreneurship education on Egerton University’s graduates’ intention to start a business

“…Therefore, through entrepreneurship education, graduates were able to search for and seize business opportunities (Densberger, 2014). This finding is similar to Ndofirepi (2020) and Shah et al (2020), that attitudes towards entrepreneurship, proactiveness, riskpropensity and self-efficacy were significant factors in influencing entrepreneurial intentions among graduates. The results also confirmed the associations premised on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) (Abdullah et al, 2017); which states that through the influence of personality traits, the attitude changes which impacts on the behaviour or intention to start business.…”

“…Thus, for university graduates to have a positive attitude towards entrepreneurship as a career option, they need to be empowered through entrepreneurship education. This is similar to that of Shah et al (2020), who found out that attitude towards entrepreneurship moderated the relationship between personal attributes of students and intention to start business.…”

“…These findings indicate that business graduates would pursue entrepreneurship due to their higher selfefficacy and subjective norm, which was slightly stronger than for non-business graduates. This is supported by Shah et al (2020) who noted a high level of self-efficacy and subjective norms, which increase the intention to start a business among university students.…”

“…The relationship between subjective norms and perceived behavioural control on graduates' decision to initiate a business venture, showed a non-significant relationship (Table 4); implying a low likelihood of a graduate's intention to start a business being influenced by their environment and the immediate social network (Shah et al, 2020). The subjective norms of most graduates are usually known to come from friends, relatives and family members (Agolla et al, 2019).…”

College Students’ Entrepreneurial Mindset: Educational Experiences Override Gender and Major

“…Therefore, it is imperative to investigate the conditional effects of gender, major, and educational experiences to separate out the unique contribution of each variable [90,91] on the entrepreneurship mindsets. Based on a great deal of evidences for the effect of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial attitude [78,[92][93][94], intention [36,78,[95][96][97], and behavior [98][99][100][101], we believe that the educational experiences in entrepreneurship would play the most crucial role in the college students' entrepreneurial mindset even after controlling for the effects of gender and major.…”