Impact of the sense of initiative and entrepreneurship competence on the entrepreneurial intention

The EU Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan highlights entrepreneurship as a key competence to develop in Europe through an entrepreneurial culture with a new concept of education whose importance is manifested to achieve better economic growth. Universities play a key role in such development through education in the sense of initiative and entrepreneurship transversal competence. To date, the predominant research objective into entrepreneurship education has been related to entrepreneurial intentions by developing a forceful theoretical framework. This article intends to bridge the existing gap that appears when analysing the impact that sense of initiative and entrepreneurship competence has on the entrepreneurial intention. Using the Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour, we analyse the role of the motivational antecedents: attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. The data employed for this research were collected from a sample of 559 Spanish university students from different courses and degrees. The structural equations model shows that Higher Education in the sense of initiative and entrepreneurship competence positively influences Ajzens´s motivational antecedents directly, and entrepreneurial intention indirectly.