Understanding and predicting students’ entrepreneurial intention through business simulation games: A perspective of COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 has disrupted educational institutes across the world. Teachers and students are now forced to teach and study online for an unidentified period, which severely hampers the learning capacity as well the student’s intention toward entrepreneurship. This study compared the impact of traditional teaching and teaching through online management simulation games on student learning performance and further leads to entrepreneurial intention. To further understand the desirability of business simulation games, we used the technology acceptance model (TAM) and extended it by employing knowledge sharing, knowledge application, learnability, perceived pleasure, and self-efficacy as exogenous variables. For this purpose, time-lagged data were collected from 277 students enrolled in entrepreneurship courses in public sector universities. To deal with homogeneity and generalizability issues, students from different collaborative universities were asked to participate in the study. Structural equation modeling was employed for analysis, where the results depict that the students learning performance was enhanced after using simulation games compared to regular theoretical online lectures, which further encouraged them to be entrepreneurs. We also concluded that simulation games are novel and effective online teaching methodology for students during a time of crisis. The study concludes with its theoretical, practical implications, and directions for future researchers.