Effect of financial education, social capital, and governmental support and mediating role of self-efficacy on students’ entrepreneurial intentions: using the AMO-based framework approach

With the emergence of self-employment and entrepreneurship as the ideal and potent tool to address the ever-increasing rate of youth unemployment in most Sub-Saharan African and developing countries, entrepreneurial intention, as well as the drivers behind this intention, has become an important topic of interest within the academic community and for policymakers. However, since previous researchers have largely focused on the direct effect of the drivers behind this intention and largely ignoring the underlying mechanism behind this effect, this study relies on the Ability-Motivation-Opportunity (AMO) framework and introduces self-efficacy as a potential mediator of the relationship between financial education, social capital, and government support on one side and entrepreneurial intention on the other side. Drawing on the descriptive cross-sectional survey research, data were elicited from 157 third year business undergraduate students at a South African University. Results from Multiple regression and mediation analysis supports the hypotheses that a significant relationship exists between students’ financial education, social capital, and government support on one hand, and entrepreneurial intention on the other hand. Also, while the relationship between students’ financial education and entrepreneurial intention was found to be fully mediated by self-efficacy, there was no mediating effect found for the direct relationship between social capital and government support on one side, and entrepreneurial intention on the other side. In conclusion, university administrators and relevant government departments are advised to design entrepreneurship education in a way to simultaneously enhance students’ abilities, motivation, and access to opportunities, while also building their self-efficacy. We also acknowledge the temporal nature of entrepreneurial intention measurement as well as its potential for reverse causality and thereby suggest a need for future longitudinal studies.