Adolph C Neethling
Abstract
Entrepreneurship education (EE) is widely acknowledged as a key contributor towards the development of entrepreneurial competencies and intentions. By developing the entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) of individuals, greater entrepreneurial behaviour is likely to follow. However, the student’s level of interest in entrepreneurship, expressed hereafter as motivation, may impact the effectiveness of the EE programme. This study focuses on the role of entrepreneurship education towards developing ESE and investigates the interaction effect of student motivation – specifically, the degree to which student motivation impacts the development of students’ self-efficacy. The study is conducted amongst undergraduate students enrolled in a semester-long entrepreneurship module at two South African universities that offer a similar entrepreneurship module. Drawing on Bandura’s social cognitive theory—which highlights the domain-specific nature of self-efficacy, this study measures ESE across six entrepreneurial dimensions. A quasi-experimental design was employed using pre- and post-tests to compare changes in ESE, with 599 and 144 students responding to the two tests, respectively. A factor analysis was conducted to identify the key motivational drivers for enrolling in the course, which enabled the measurement of the moderating effect of motivation on ESE. Using Type III ANOVA, the study finds that EE significantly improves students’ ESE, but that the degree of development varies relative to the initial motivation levels. Students with lower motivation reported greater gains in ESE, while highly motivated students showed minimal to no change, suggesting a re-evaluation of the curriculum to achieve greater alignment with the needs of the preferred beneficiary of the entrepreneurship module. This study contributes to the discourse on how educators can better align EE interventions with student needs to maximise their impact on entrepreneurial self-efficacy development.