MANAGING ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT: HOW EDUCATION ENHANCES SELF-EFFICACY AND BUSINESS INTENTIONS
MANAGING ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT: HOW EDUCATION ENHANCES SELF-EFFICACY AND BUSINESS INTENTIONS

Summary/Abstract: Entrepreneurial education plays a strategic role in shaping students' motivation and ability to engage in future business creation, yet the mechanisms through which it influences entrepreneurial intention remain insufficiently explored. As entrepreneurship becomes a key catalyst of economic growth, innovation, and competitiveness, understanding how higher education programs translate learning experiences into business idea development and entrepreneurial action is increasingly important. Central to this discussion is the debate over whether entrepreneurship education primarily provides foundational business knowledge or fundamentally shapes students’ underlying psychological determinants—such as self-efficacy, perceived behavioral control, and entrepreneurial ambition—that convert learning experiences into genuine business creation intentions. This study investigates how entrepreneurial education contributes to business intention formation by examining its direct impact and its indirect effect through entrepreneurial self-efficacy. The research draws on insights from the GUESSS Project (Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students' Survey) and employs survey data collected from university students across three periods—2016 (N = 107), 2018 (N = 244), and 2021 (N = 99). Pearson correlations and multiple regression analyses were used to evaluate the relationships among entrepreneurial education, self-efficacy, and business intention. Findings reveal consistently significant positive correlations among all constructs across all periods. Entrepreneurial self-efficacy emerges as the strongest predictor of business intention, explaining 28.3% of its variance in 2016 and increasing to 56.2% in 2018 and 2021. By contrast, the direct effect of entrepreneurial education on intention is modest and inconsistent, suggesting that its influence operates primarily through enhancing students’ confidence in their entrepreneurial abilities. These results confirm the hypothesis that entrepreneurial education strengthens the positive association between self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention. Overall, the study underscores the central role of self-efficacy in managing entrepreneurial development and highlights the importance of experiential, skills-oriented educational approaches in fostering meaningful business intentions among university students. The findings provide practical implications for higher education institutions aiming to design entrepreneurship programs that not only teach business knowledge but also actively build students’ confidence and capability to launch ventures. Future research should explore longitudinal outcomes of such programs to determine their long-term impact on actual business creation and entrepreneurial success.

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