기업가정신 교육과 창업의도의 관계: 기업가정신의 매개효과 및 성별 조절효과

Although many studies have been conducted to examine the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship intention, these relationships still report inconsistent findings. These results imply that mediating factors as well as moderating factors existing between these relationships. In this study, we examine the mediating effects of entrepreneurship orientation on these relationships and the moderating effects of gender. That is, we suggest that entrepreneurship education provide various resources for both men and women which may result in positive entrepreneurial orientation which could be translated into entrepreneurial intention later in life. Furthermore, we expect such relationship to be strong for women than for men. We developed hypotheses and research model as below: Hypothesis 1: Entrepreneurship education experience will have a positive impact on entrepreneurial intentions. Hypothesis 2: The effectiveness of entrepreneurship education will positively affect the entrepreneurial intentions. Hypothesis 3. Entrepreneurship orientation will mediate the relationship between entrepreneurship education experience and entrepreneurial intentions. Hypothesis 4: The positive effect of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship intention will be stronger for women than for men. To test the hypotheses, we adopted Global Entrepreneurship Trend Report data which was collected by Korea Entrepreneurship Foundation. The GETR data is composed of 40,000 data collected from 20 countries. After eliminating outliers and unfaithful respondents, 37,882 data were used to test the hypotheses. We adopted hierarchical regression model and Model 5 proposed by Hayes (2012) using Process Macro for data analysis. The result showed that entrepreneurship education had a significant effect on the entrepreneurship intention. Also, entrepreneurship orientation was found to mediate the relationship between entrepreneurship education experience & entrepreneurial intention. Lastly, we found that gender moderated the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship intention. Specifically, the positive effect of entrepreneurial education on entrepreneurial intentions was stronger for women than for men. Our study shows that prior entrepreneurial education experiences increase entrepreneurial intention. Furthermore, the effect of entrepreneurial education was stronger for women than for men. The result may have to do with the fact that women generally have low entrepreneurial intention than men, which reflects the gender stereotypes prevailing in most countries. Nevertheless, it confirms providing entrepreneurial education for women is an effective way to overcome such gender streotypes. The result is in line with diversity management literature where leadership training has been found to be more effective for minorities and women. Next question will be to examine whether gender equity level at the national level have any effect on the relationship that we found. The effect of entrepreneurial eco system may also have impact on our findings, which we hope to examine in our future research. One caveat of our study is that our measure of entreprenerial education does not take into account the content of the program, nor do we include the change that occurred as a result of such education. Future research should consider these aspects.