The Effect of Role Model on Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy and Entrepreneurial Intention: Focused on Korean and Chinese University Students

Role model has received remarkable attentions in entrepreneurship literature over long time but majority of studies were conducted in western context. As an explorative study, this paper attempted to replicate the effect of role model in eastern context based on the discussions in the literature, using total 440 samples made of Korean and Chinese university students. This study examined the impact and effectiveness of role model on promoting entrepreneurship of university students, considering the main stream of entrepreneurship study has been concentrated on the effect of entrepreneurial education. Our findings presented that role model had a positive impact on both entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention of Korean and Chinese university students. Also, entrepreneurial self-efficacy had a significant and positive relationship with entrepreneurial intention of university students. The result of this study implies that role model need to be factored into entrepreneurship education curriculum in order to make it more effective and powerful promotional and educational tool for young university students. Theoretical and practical implications were presented based on the findings of this study.