Self Efficacy and Motivation Mediate the Relationship between Entrepreneurial Literacy and Entrepreneurial Intention among Indonesian University Students

Abstract Entrepreneurship education is increasingly expected to equip university students with not only business knowledge but also the capacity to evaluate entrepreneurial opportunities and translate such understanding into career intentions. However, prior research has reported inconsistent effect sizes and unclear mechanisms linking entrepreneurship-related learning to entrepreneurial intention. This study investigates whether entrepreneurial literacy functions as a human-capital antecedent of entrepreneurial intention and whether this relationship is transmitted through entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial motivation among university students in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Using a cross-sectional survey of 120 students, the study employed ordinary least squares path analysis with bootstrapped confidence intervals (3,000 resamples). The findings show that entrepreneurial literacy has a positive direct effect on entrepreneurial intention. In addition, entrepreneurial literacy exerts a positive serial indirect effect through entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial motivation. At the same time, entrepreneurial self-efficacy shows a negative direct association with entrepreneurial intention when motivation is controlled producing a significant negative indirect pathway through self-efficacy alone. The novelty of this study lies in introducing entrepreneurial literacy as a distinct human-capital construct and demonstrating a suppression-based serial mediation mechanism in the formation of entrepreneurial intention. The study concludes that entrepreneurial literacy strengthens entrepreneurial intention both directly and through motivation-enhancing processes, but self-efficacy alone may dampen intention when it heightens critical feasibility appraisal. For economics education, these findings suggest that entrepreneurship-oriented learning should integrate capability building with motivational design to better convert students’ economic understanding into entrepreneurial career commitment.