Entrepreneurial Action and Intention: The Role of Entrepreneurial Mindset, Emotional Intelligence, and Grit

Increasing students’ entrepreneurial mindset (EM) is one of the main goals of entrepreneurship education, which is increasingly taught across multiple disciplines. One challenge in EM education is finding an effective measure. In this work, we investigate the Engineering Student Entrepreneurial Mindset Assessment (ESEMA), which intends to measure a broad definition of EM. This paper compares the constructs of the ESEMA to those found in related measures of traits and attitudes using a sample that includes engineering students, business students, and practicing entrepreneurs. In addition to validating the instrument constructs, we explore the relationship between the ESEMA factors and measures of Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Grit. Our study confirms that the ESEMA survey loads into the six expected factors. We discover that ESEMA-Empathy and EI-Others’ Emotion Appraisal as well as EI-Use of Emotion and Grit-Perseverance are similar constructs. Additionally, our results show EM-Ideation, EM-Interest, and EI-Use of Emotion to consistently and positively relate to entrepreneurial action and intention while EM-Open Mindedness relates negatively. Overall, our study provides a better understanding of how we can measure students’ entrepreneurial mindset, differences in mindsets across disciplines and between students and practicing entrepreneurs, and the relationship of the constructs measured and entrepreneurial actions and intentions.