The impact of business simulation games on students’ entrepreneurial intention

Abstract

For several decades, a considerable agreement on the magnitude of intensifying entrepreneurship in education to motivate the economic development and young generation's spirit to startup has been subconsciously accepted in the literature, but the education system has been slow in seeing its importance and resistant to change. Business simulation games have been affirmed as a very effective business learning tool for entrepreneurship education, but very few educators have properly applied them to arouse students' desire to study entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial intention is gradually formed through the process of transforming extrinsic motivations into intrinsic motivations which directly influence students' entrepreneurial mindset. Consequently, examining the role of both the surrounding conditions and deep-down incentives is extremely crucial in the context of building EI, which is quite rare with regards to BSG perspective. To address this void in the literature, we explore the role of human-system interaction and subjective norms (extrinsic) with self-efficacy (intrinsic) in building students’ entrepreneurial intention using the theories of Self-Determination (SDT) and Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR). The PLS-SEM analytical approach was employed to analyze the data collected from 195 undergraduate students from business universities around Vietnam, especially those from Southern provinces of the country, with the majority contribution of UEH respondents. The results showed that self-efficacy plays as a full mediator between human-system interaction and entrepreneurial intention. Additionally, subjective norms strengthens the effect of human-systemstr interaction on self-efficacy, implying that subjective norms play a moderating role in this connection. This study also observed a significant gender linkages as males are more likely to outperform females in determining their entrepreneurial potential. The findings of this study are expected to have substantial implications for universities' boards of management, game designers, and future researchers to focus on developing entrepreneurship that accommodates students’ values.