Who Needs Entrepreneurial Role Models? Driving Forces of Students’ Cyber-Entrepreneurial Career Intention

Abstract

Cyber-entrepreneurship has become an important topic of debate in academia primarily because of an increasingly competitive nature of E-commerce industry and internet. Since cyber-entrepreneurial career-decision encompasses higher degree of personal risks and commitments among those aspiring to become 'cyberentrepreneurs', there is need for in-depth understanding on the driving factors that influencing Cyber-entrepreneurial intentions. By integrating the concepts of social cognitive theory and goal-setting theory, the current research aims to explore the effects of Cyber-entrepreneurial self-efficacy (CESE) and goal commitment (GC) on Cyber-entrepreneurial intentions (CEIs) in the context of undergraduate entrepreneurship education, and inquires whether the presence of entrepreneurial role models (ERMs) has any effect on the CEIs among undergraduates. Structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis were used to analyze the data collected from 279 undergraduate students from several universities in Taiwan-among which 146 were with entrepreneurial role models and 143 were without. The results showed that GC has a partial mediation effect between CESE and CEI only in the cases of students without ERMs. Multi-sample SEM revealed a significant difference between the effects of CESE on CEI in students with and without ERMs. These findings may have important theoretical and practical implications to students undertaking entrepreneurship degrees and those making leap-decisions to enter the cyber-entrepreneurial field.

Understanding digital entrepreneurial intentions: A capital theory perspective

“…The literature collated on digital entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial intention and digital entrepreneurial intention is indicative of the fact that digital entrepreneurial intentions as a field of research is yet to be explored extensively. Various theoretical paradigms including career anchor perspective (Hoon and Kam, 2002), psychological career theory (Millman et al, 2010), personality trait theory (Ismail et al, 2012), social cognitive career theory (Chen and Claire, 2013), entrepreneurial attitude orientation (Batool et al, 2015), personality-motivation model (Wang et al, 2016), theory of panned behavior (Farani et al, 2017), goal setting theory (Chang et al, 2018) and positive psychology (Chang et al, 2019(Chang et al, , 2020 have been used to explain the possible antecedents of technology driven entrepreneurial intentions. But the limited number of studies is indicative of the fact very few variables have been studied and capital theory has been missed altogether.…”

“…, 2016), theory of panned behavior (Farani et al. , 2017), goal setting theory (Chang et al. , 2018) and positive psychology (Chang et al.…”

Digital entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education: a review of the literature

“…Many personal traits, namely, entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and digital literacy were found Digital Entrepreneurship education positively related to digital innovativeness (Mancha and Shankaranarayanan, 2021). Similarly, IT knowledge, IT adoption and entrepreneurial tendency (Zenebe et al, 2018), computer self-efficacy and personal innovativeness in IT (Chen, 2013(Chen, , 2014 and cyber-entrepreneurial self-efficacy were significant predictors of DE intentions and goal commitment, especially for students with no entrepreneurial role models (Chang et al, 2018b). Finally, educational support regarding entrepreneurship and ICT were significant predictors of technology entrepreneurship intention (Youssef et al, 2021).…”

“…Elements of technology, business and environment in appropriate proportions of knowledge and experience can create successful Internet startups (Zhang, 2014). Experience obtained through authentic situations, such as student clubs, workshops, incubators, internships and maker spaces is an important driver for students' entrepreneurial selfefficacy (Monllor and Soto-Simeone, 2020) and helps them develop the required mindset in terms of traits, skills and competencies, especially in the field of digital technology (Chang et al, 2018b;Le Dinh et al, 2018;Secundo et al, 2020b).…”

Dreaming digital or chasing new real pathways? Unveiling the determinants shaping Saudi youth's digital entrepreneurial intention

“…Being exposed to ERM helps the individual provide information, advice and mentoring and draw inspiration from real cases of successful entrepreneurs to whom he/she can be identified (Choukir et al, 2019;Fellnhofer and Mueller, 2018;Fellnhofer and Puumalainen, 2017). According to Chang et al (2018) and Mir et al (2022), it was stated that there is a positive and direct relationship between ERM and DEI. Other authors argued that the presence of ERM can influence intentions through other mediators (self-efficacy, PBC, etc.)…”