Table 3 Summary of findings as they relate to the research questions

1) Does the university’s ESS affect the precursors of SEI of students?

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous study has considered the SEI of students as influenced by the university’s ESS. Some researchers studied the influence of the university on the SEI of students in relation to social entrepreneurship education (Adelekan et al., 2018; Kedmenec et al., 2017; Kwong et al., 2012; Piperopoulos & Dimov, 2015; Smith & Woodworth, 2012; Tshikovhi & Shambare, 2015). Radin, Rahman, Othman and Pihie (2017) found that public university students have a higher potential to become social entrepreneurs as compared to those from private universities. Thus, the university’s ESS has the capacity to influence the precursors of SEI.

2) How did previous studies measure the effect of the university’s ESS on the precursors of SEI of students?

Politis et al. (2016) concluded that SEI is shaped in the same way as commercial entrepreneurial intention. Thus, SEI can be assessed with similar models, e.g. based on Ajzen’s (1991) TPB. Bazan et al. (2019) have successfully applied a variant of Trivedi’s (2016) entrepreneurial intention model to understand the influence of the university’s ESS on the precursors of the commercial entrepreneurial intention of students.