A partial least-square mediation analysis of the contribution of cross-campus entrepreneurship education to students’ entrepreneurial intentions

Abstract

The present paper presents findings of entrepreneurial intentions of a group of 313 undergraduate students of the University of Oradea, Romania, from different non-economic fields of study (engineering, health, social sciences, mathematics, natural sciences, humanities, and arts), including students from rural areas and other disadvantaged groups enrolled in an entrepreneurship education project financed through European Social Fund. A complex mediation chain is set in place in a net of relationships linking the benefits of entrepreneurial education to entrepreneurship self-efficacy, entrepreneurship attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norms in our estimation of entrepreneurial intentions. Using a multigroup analysis, we address the OECD inclusive entrepreneurship perspective of students ‘at-risk’ on the labor market and under-represented in entrepreneurship, identifying how the benefits of entrepreneurship education can be better capitalized by each category. The present paper advocates the necessity to extend entrepreneurship education outside the economics and business specializations.