Entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial behaviour: Do self-efficacy and attitude matter?

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education has been acknowledged for its effectiveness in motivating entrepreneurial activities. This creates a motivation to understand the mechanism of entrepreneurship education in inspiring university graduates to become entrepreneurs. In this study, we investigated how the attitude toward entrepreneurship education (ATEE) contributes to the intentions of university students to be entrepreneurs. Specifically, we examined the direct relationships of ATEE (e.g., behavioural, affective, and cognitive) and the indirect relationships via attitude toward entrepreneurship (ATE) and entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) with entrepreneurial intention (EI). In total, 472 third-year, fourth-year, freshly graduated, and postgraduate students (males = 301 and females = 171) at the Faculty of Commerce & Economics, Sana'a University, Yemen, participated in the online survey. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyse the data. The findings of this study showed that the model explained 52 % of the variance in EI. ATEE had a significant direct and indirect relationship with EI, which indicated a partial mediation role of ATE and ESE. Our findings also showed that EI is fostered more via ATE than via ESE, which indicated that the attitude of the students played a significant role in shaping their intention to act entrepreneurially. This study contributed to the existing literature on entrepreneurship education by integrating the effect of ATEE and its behavioural, cognitive, and affective components. It tested the theory of entrepreneurship education in a challenging context and contributed to the generalizability of the entrepreneurship impact on EIs.