Unveiling how entrepreneurship education components shape green entrepreneurship intentions through personal values and environmental concerns

Abstract

We applied three interrelated theories (i.e., the theory of planned behaviour, value-belief-norm theory, and social learning theory) to examine the associations between entrepreneurship education components and students’ green entrepreneurship intentions (GrEI), while exploring the mediating roles of personal values and environmental concerns. Data were collected from a cross-sectional survey of a convenience-sampled group of 1053 university students in Ghana. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was employed to test the proposed research model using SmartPLS 4. We established significant positive associations between entrepreneurship education components and students’ GrEI, with practical projects and exposure to green entrepreneurs showing the strongest associations, although the direct effect sizes were small. Furthermore, our findings supported the mediating role of personal values and environmental concerns in this relationship, with modest indirect effects consistent with complementary mediation; personal values showed the stronger indirect pathway. We, consequently, suggest practical ways to encourage green entrepreneurship, sustainability-integrated curricula, locally grounded project-based learning, structured engagement with green entrepreneurial role models, capability development for digitally enabled green venturing, and responsible use of emerging tools, including generative artificial intelligence. By concentrating on the interaction between the particular elements of entrepreneurship education (i.e., theoretical knowledge, practical projects, and exposure to green entrepreneurs) and GrEI, our study extends prior research by testing parallel mediating pathways in a Sub-Saharan African university context. Given the cross-sectional, self-reported design, the results should be interpreted as context-specific associations rather than causal effects.