Identification of Temporal Construal Effects on Entrepreneurial Employment Desirability in STEM Students

Abstract

As universities expand the influence entrepreneurial programmes have on science, engineering, technology and math (STEM) students, we investigate the impact Temporal Construal Theory has on measures of entrepreneurial employment desirability in identifying nascent entrepreneurs. This quasi-experiment sampled 464 undergraduate students over a five-year period, measuring the time construal influence in desirability to start a business between STEM students and an intentionally biased sample of entrepreneurship students. Our findings show that temporal construal significantly influences student entrepreneurial employment desirability in STEM students. The biased sample of entrepreneurship students validated the instrument with positive short-term and highly positive long-term entrepreneurial employment desirability (p < 0.001). Our study suggests the temporal construal effect on employment intention is a key consideration in identifying nascent entrepreneurs at a university, and can heavily influence who is targeted for exposure to entrepreneurship training.