From emotion to action: How entrepreneurship education cultivates entrepreneurial intention through emotional engagement and personality development

Entrepreneurship education produces contradictory effects on entrepreneurial intention across contexts, suggesting theoretical underspecification regarding transformation mechanisms. Integrating Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), Self-Determination Theory (SDT), and Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), this study proposes dual complementary pathways direct cognitive routes and indirect affective routes through emotional engagement to explain variable educational effectiveness. Data were collected from 300 undergraduate students across five universities in Indonesia's eastern development region (Nusa Tenggara Timur) using stratified random sampling across five university strata and three academic major clusters. Sample adequacy was confirmed via G*Power analysis (minimum n = 85 for f2 = 0.15, power = 0.80, four predictors; actual n = 300 far exceeds this threshold). PLS-SEM analysis reveals that student emotional engagement partially mediates the education-intention relationship (VAF = 27.34%; indirect effect Beta = 0.105, 95% CI [0.058, 0.162], p < 0.001), operating alongside significant direct cognitive pathways (Beta = 0.279, 95% CI [0.144, 0.412], p < 0.001). Contrary to person-environment fit predictions, entrepreneurial personality does not significantly moderate emotional engagement's effects on intention (Beta = −0.014, p = 0.793), suggesting affective mechanisms may operate broadly across personality profiles in the sampled context. These findings challenge deficit models restricting entrepreneurship education's transformative potential to students exhibiting innate traits, demonstrating instead that quality pedagogical design cultivating emotional engagement may benefit diverse student populations, particularly in developing regions compensating for ecosystem constraints through psychological development pathways.