Developing entrepreneurial intentions among business graduates of higher educational institutions through entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial passion: A moderated mediation model

Using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), this study examines the mediating role of Entre-preneurial Passion (EP) in the association between Entrepreneurship Education (EE) and Entre-preneurial Intentions (EI), and also the moderating role of Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy (ESE) on the association between EE and EP. The study collected data through an online survey from 359 private university students residing in Dhaka and Chittagong. SPSS 23 and Amos 24 were utilized to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings revealed that EE positively improves the EI of university students via EP. The study further demonstrated that the influence of EE on EP is more significant for student with high ESE then low ESE. The study extends the existing literature on the EE-EI link by integrating the TPB from the private higher education perspective during the COVID-19 crisis. The findings offer valuable insight and guidance for policymakers and university management regarding how and when EE leads to better EI among university students. This is one of the pioneering empirical studies highlighting the importance of EE on EI among private uni-versity students in an emerging South-Asian setting. Moreover, the study confirms that entre-preneurial passion plays a key role in explaining how EE drives EI.