Institutional and educational influences on entrepreneurial intention and self-efficacy in the Middle East: evidence from UAE

This research investigates the effect of institutional factors and entrepreneurial education programs in the entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention of university students in the Middle East, specifically in the United Arab Emirates. This context remains underexplored in the entrepreneurship literature. The study examines how students develop entrepreneurial self-efficacy and start-up intentions based on their perceptions of the regulatory, normative, and cognitive environments, as well as their exposure to entrepreneurship education. Data were collected through online questionnaires distributed by email and other online channels to university students across the UAE. Canonical correlation analysis was employed to study the complex relationships between different groups of variables. The results demonstrate that entrepreneurship education plays a central role in building students’ confidence in their entrepreneurial skills and intention. The findings also show that regulatory, cognitive, and normative perceptions are related to entrepreneurial self-efficacy, while only normative perceptions and entrepreneurship education show a significant relationship with entrepreneurial intention. This study is unique because it is among the first to test the effect of education and institutional factors on entrepreneurship in the Middle East and the UAE, and because it shows that these elements do not all matter equally.