Exploring the effect of students’ engagement in entrepreneurship competitions on their entrepreneurial intention

Since entrepreneurship serves as an important catalyst for national economic development, there has been a growing number of entrepreneurship courses, as well as innovation and entrepreneurship competitions, available in universities. In accordance with imprinting theory and social cognitive theory, this research investigates whether students with high engagement in entrepreneurship competitions (EECs) have greater entrepreneurial intention (EI). We conducted a questionnaire survey and obtained 229 valid responses from a professional data collection platform to test our hypotheses through Hayes' PROCESS macro. The findings show that students' EECs are positively correlated with their EI and that this relationship is mediated by their entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE). Furthermore, students’ entrepreneurial orientation (EO) moderates the mediating effect of EECs on their EI via ESE. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications in line with our findings and provide some directions for future research.