The Impact of Action Planning after Causation-and-Effectuation-Based Entrepreneurship Education

The entrepreneurship literature shows inconsistent results in outcome effectiveness, such as en-trepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE), entrepreneurial intention (EI), and entrepreneurial behavior. This could be due to the sole focus on the motivational aspects of behavioral change. Action planning, a volitional intervention used to modify health behavior, could resolve the inconsistent results men-tioned above. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the direct impacts of action planning inter-vention (API) following entrepreneurship education (EE) on ESE, EI, and opportunity recognition and to examine the behavioral change process from motivational and volitional perspectives. In this randomized controlled trial (RCT), we considered action planning to enhance entrepreneurial be-havior after EE. The sample included 83 participants from a university in Myanmar. We randomly assigned the students to the API and control groups. We collected data on ESE and EI before and after training. We used objective measures for opportunity recognition through an opportunity evalua-tion framework. Serial mediation analysis revealed that the volitional impact on opportunity recognition was positively significant. From a motivational standpoint, ESE improved significantly, but we found no significant impact on EI; ESE and EI were serial mediators, with no specific medi-ation solely by ESE or EI. The findings contribute to the EE literature by presenting a brief and cost-effective API for EE.