Do learning environments make a difference? Determinants of students’ entrepreneurial intentions between distance- and on-campus education

As the majority of universities emphasize entrepreneurship and start-up development among their students, higher education simultaneously faces profound transformation driven by digitalization and AI. While research has examined a variety of determinants of students’ entrepreneurial intentions (EI), the role of learning environments as part of the digitalization of higher education institutions, specifically the distinction between distance-learning and on-campus formats, remains unexplored. To address this gap, this study empirically investigates how learning environments shape EI through their differential effects on entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) and resilience (RE) using a structural equation model (SEM) based on the data collected from two universities among the GUESSS 2023 edition in Germany. The results demonstrate that the distance-learning format emerges as a statistically significant factor of ESE, while it also has a significantly stronger positive effect on ESE than on RE, suggesting that different learning formats may attract a specific and distinct set of entrepreneurial competencies.