Educação e intenção empreendedora: uma análise dos antecedentes comportamentais em estudantes do ensino médio de escolas públicas no Ceará

Abstract

This study analyzed entrepreneurial intention and the influence of behavioral, educational, and socio-family factors among 218 public high school students from Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil. Grounded in the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991), the study compared entrepreneurial intention between students exposed to a formal entrepreneurship course and those without such training. The Entrepreneurial Intention Questionnaire (Liñán; Chen, 2009) was used, and data were analyzed using t-tests, Pearson correlation, and multiple linear regression. The results indicated moderate levels of entrepreneurial intention in both groups, with no statistically significant differences between them, leading to the partial rejection of the hypothesis that entrepreneurship education directly increases the desire to start a business. However, students who received formal entrepreneurship education exhibited higher Perceived Behavioral Control, indicating greater technical self-efficacy. The regression analysis revealed substantial explanatory power of the model (Hair et al., 2009), identifying Personal Attitude as the strongest predictor of entrepreneurial intention, while Subjective Norms showed the weakest influence. In the socio-family context, having entrepreneurial family members was not a determining factor; however, contact with entrepreneurs perceived as successful showed a positive association with entrepreneurial intention. It is concluded that entrepreneurship education strengthens technical competencies, but entrepreneurial intention is a multifaceted phenomenon influenced by motivational, social, and individual factors, highlighting the need for more integrated and experiential pedagogical practices.