Enhancing students’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy through exposure to successful and unsuccessful role models
Building on structural modeling, this experimental research conducted on 276 students measures the impact of entrepreneurial role models on self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention. Our findings indicate that students’ exposure to a message presenting a role model testimonial generates a positive emotional arousal and a favorable attitude towards the message, which consequently strengthens the relationship between self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention. Our results demonstrate that for some participants negative models also generate a positive impact, reinforcing self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention. Furthermore, our research highlight the fact that message framing and oral encouragement of one of the members of the pedagogical team before message exposure exerts a somehow paradoxical moderating effect on these results, which varies according to the participants’ gender. We discuss these outcomes and we highlight the limited role of pedagogical staff in the impact of entrepreneurial role models.