Boosting and sustaining passion: A long-term perspective on the effects of entrepreneurship training

We know that entrepreneurship training is effective but we lack a theoretical understanding of the dynamic processes after training leading to business creation. In this study, we develop a theoretical model to explain short- and long-term effects of entrepreneurship training on entrepreneurial self-efficacy, passion, and business creation. We hypothesize that entrepreneurship training boosts entrepreneurial self-efficacy and passion, and that entrepreneurial self-efficacy sustains the positive effect of entrepreneurship training on passion over time. Furthermore, we hypothesize that entrepreneurship training impacts business creation through passion. We conducted a field experiment with four measurement waves over 32 months resulting in 784 observations from 227 participants. Discontinuous growth curve modeling and joint lagged analyses supported our hypotheses. Our findings indicate that post-training processes are dynamic and that entrepreneurial self-efficacy is important to maintain high passion after training. Maintaining high passion after training eventually leads to business creation.