By: Jose Fernando Lopez-Mu~noz a , Ignacio Mira-Solves b , Josefina Novejarque-Civera and Mabel Pisa-Bo aa ESIC Business & Marketing School, Valencia, Spain; b Miguel Hernandez University, Elche, Spain
Introduction
According to the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations General Assembly,2015), the quality of education is one of the most critical challenges for any country.Data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) consortium1 consider entre-preneurship education an issue of worldwide economic and social significance with major policy implications for every nation (Bosma et al., 2020).
The quality and diversity of entrepreneurial activities are positively associated with the skills, technical knowledge, and experience of entrepreneurs. The growth and development in the curricula of programs devoted to entrepreneurship and new venture creation have been remarkable (Kuratko, 2005). However, education is universally regarded as the least well-developed element of the framework that supports entrepreneurship (Bosmaet al., 2020). This is certainly the case in Spain, as conclusively reflected in the GEM’s National Expert Survey from 2004 to 2019.
Previous studies on the effects of entrepreneurship education have produced contradictory results. For example, some have shown that entrepreneurship education has significant positive effects on students’ self-assessed entrepreneurial skills (VonGraevenitz et al., 2010), while other studies have shown that such an effect is insignificant and even significantly negative on their intention to become entrepreneurs (Oosterbeek et al., 2010).
It is widely acknowledged that entrepreneurship education has had an impact on student propensity and intentionality (Pittaway & Cope, 2007). What is unclear is the extent to which such education enables students to become more effective entrepreneurs. Therefore, this paper fills this gap by examining the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship – specifically opportunity-driven entrepreneurship – and the mediation of entrepreneurs’ self-assessed entrepreneurial skills. To that end, this study is grounded in the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) (Ajzen et al., 1980; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) and uses data from the GEM project.
The TPB has been used to predict entrepreneurial behaviour (Jeon, 2018; Kautonen et al., 2013; Nishimura & Tristan, 2011). However, calls have been made to investigate the link between perceived behavioural control and entrepreneurial behaviour while avoiding student samples (Lortie & Castogiovanni, 2015).
The GEM can be used as a basis for reliable international comparisons of the role of entrepreneurship in national economic growth (Reynolds et al., 2005). National teams taking part in GEM commit to undertaking two national yearly surveys: The Adult Population Survey (APS) and the National Expert Survey (NES). The APS asks a nationally representative sample of working-age adults about their entrepreneurial activities, attitudes, motivations, and ambitions.
The GEM approach then looks at individuals by assessing their attitudes and perceptions towards entrepreneurship and self-reported involvement in starting and/or owning and managing a business. Thus, the GEM APS provides detailed information about entrepreneurial activity in each economy. However, any decision to start and run a new venture will be made in a specific context and encompass a wide range of local and national conditions that may facilitate or hinder that new venture.
This paper focuses on three main objectives: (i) to measure the direct and indirect effects of entrepreneurship education on opportunity-driven entrepreneurship; (ii) to assess the significance of important mediating factors such as self-efficacy belief; and(iii) to suggest policies that may enhance entrepreneurial activity at the country level.
Therefore, this paper extends the existing literature by integrating individual and environmental conditions that influence entrepreneurial behaviour. To the best of our knowledge, no further studies exist on the intervening mediation variables on the link between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial behaviour.
Between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial behaviour. Our study shows that the TPB explains opportunity-driven entrepreneurship. Moreover, it shows that self-efficacy belief is a mediator between entrepreneurial education and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship. Although the authors held that entrepreneurial education was related to entrepreneurship, self-efficacy belief represents the2 J. F. LÓPEZ-MUÑOZ ET AL.
Generative mechanism by which entrepreneurial education influences opportunity-driven entrepreneurship. That is, entrepreneurial education leads to greater self-efficacy belief, which then leads to greater opportunity-driven entrepreneurship. The paper is structured as follows. The next section presents the conceptual frame-work and outlines the specific research questions. The following section describes the methodology for data collection, data analyses and results. The paper concludes with the discussion of the results and their implications for entrepreneurship research, practice, and public policy
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