This study examines the influence of entrepreneurial education on entrepreneurial intention through the mediating roles of entrepreneurial passion and entrepreneurial mindset among Indonesian university students. Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4.0 and data from 278 students across 11 Indonesian universities, the findings reveal that entrepreneurial education significantly enhances both passion (β = 0.869, p < 0.001) and mindset (β = 0.715, p < 0.001), but shows no direct significant effect on entrepreneurial intention (β = 0.150, p = 0.178). Entrepreneurial passion demonstrates a significant positive effect on intention (β = 0.311, p = 0.011), whereas entrepreneurial mindset does not reach conventional significance (β = 0.199, p = 0.098). Importantly, mediation analysis reveals that passion fully mediates (indirect-only) the relationship between entrepreneurial education and intention (β = 0.207, p < 0.001), while mindset also serves as a significant indirect-only mediator (β = 0.155, p < 0.001), indicating that education influences intention through psychological mechanisms rather than directly. The study demonstrates adequate discriminant validity (HTMT values ranging from 0.675 to 0.854, with the mindset–passion pair marginally at the 0.85 threshold), no collinearity concerns (VIF < 3.3), and substantial explanatory power (R²=75.6% for passion, 51.1% for mindset, 43.6% for intention). These findings contribute to entrepreneurship education theory by demonstrating the critical role of psychological readiness, particularly passion in translating educational inputs into entrepreneurial intentions, and suggest that Indonesian universities should design more experiential and action-oriented programs that cultivate both affective and cognitive entrepreneurial competencies.
Sulistyowati et al. (Mon,) studied this question.