Kevin Celuch, Bryan Bourdeau, Doan Winkel
The present study merges work related to entrepreneurial cognition to deepen theory as to how students come to view themselves as entrepreneurs. Given the significance established for dispositions like identity in prior literature related to transfer effects, these findings appear to be an important area for entrepreneurship educators interested in transfer of learning beyond the classroom. Results of the present research suggest that students’ entrepreneurial identity aspiration mediated the combined impact of entrepreneurial outcome expectations and selfefficacy related to starting a business on their intention to start a business. In addition, entrepreneurial self-efficacy was also found to directly influence start-up intention. It would appear that the dispositional effect of identity helps consolidate more specific outcome expectations and efficacy perceptions to influence intent. Overall, the proposed model is theoretically grounded, parsimonious, and compares very favorably with other models in terms of predictive ability. Findings hold theoretical and practical implications for future work in the area.