Entrepreneurship Education and the Promotion of Startup Development: The Case of Pilar, Paraguay

Abstract

Ajzen’s (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 50(2), 179–211, 1991) Theory of Planned Behavior has been extensively used in order to assess the effectiveness of Entrepreneurship Education Programs (EEPs) in promoting startup development by increasing EEP participants’ entrepreneurial intentions and attitudes (personal attitude toward the behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control) toward entrepreneurship. However, studies that provide evidence from developing countries, where small businesses are the main economic units, and that test particular types of EEPs, focused on those economic units, remain limited. Therefore, this chapter aims at understanding whether EEP participants’ entrepreneurial intentions and attitudes toward startup development increase significantly after having completed an Education through Entrepreneurship type of EEP, by carrying out a single-group experiment—a 3-day-long intensive workshop named “Entrepreneurship Education and Creation of Small Businesses” in Pilar, Paraguay—adopting a pretest and posttest research design and conducting a paired t-test for means. This study belongs to the group of studies that have found statistically significant increases in EEP participants’ entrepreneurial intentions and perceived behavioral control and a positive, yet not statistically significant, effect on EEP participants’ personal attitude toward the behavior and subjective norms. These findings have several implications for EEP designers and administrators, as they recommend the implementation of the studied type of EEP.