Developing orientation to achieve entrepreneurial intention: A pretest-post-test analysis of entrepreneurship education programs

This paper develops and tests a model considering the effects of entrepreneurship education programs on the individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) and the role of IEO as an antecedent of the attitudes and entrepreneurial intention (EI) through the dimensions of Theory of planned behavior (TBP). This study uses a pretest-post-test analysis with data from two emerging countries in Latin America by considering 1723 Colombian and Ecuadorian undergraduate students. Sign-Test and Wilcoxon signed-rank test confirmed the impact of entrepreneurship education programs on IEO. Moreover, structural equation modeling was used to validate the theoretical model and test hypotheses between IEO, TBP and EI. The findings offer important theoretical and practical implications for the field of entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial behavior. •Entrepreneurship education primarily impacts individual entrepreneurial orientation.•Entrepreneurship education increases innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking.•Individual entrepreneurial orientation helps to explain the antecedents and EI.•The TPB's dimensions exert a complete mediation in the IEO-EI relationship.•EI will be the consequence of the individual entrepreneurial orientation development.