Intentions encompassing a cognitive focus such as interest, hope, and belief that influence the option of entrepreneurship for an individual is regarded as the most significant indicator of actual behavior (Ajzen, 1991; Peng et al., 2012; Tiwari et al., 2017a). Entrepreneurial intention is characterized as a diligent mindset guided to planned entrepreneurial orientation through personal knowledge and understanding (Do and Dadvari, 2017). Entrepreneurial intention is considered a reliable indicator of entrepreneurial behavior for a person planning to launch a new venture on a long-term basis (Obschonka et al., 2010). A significant surge in Social Entrepreneurial Intention related research, widely regarded as a prominent field of social entrepreneurship studies, has been observed in recent years, and it has become an emerging field of interest for academicians and researchers (Liñán and Fayolle, 2015; Tan et al., 2020). SEI may be termed as cognitive action by persuading individuals to gain information, understand solutions, and undertake social entrepreneurial activities (Mair et al., 2006). To put it another way, SE intentions may be summed up as a desire to start a business or start a social initiative with the goal of doing good for society (Bacq and Alt, 2018). Akhter et al. (2020) opined that students’ intentions toward social entrepreneurship to address underlying societal problems through the establishment of a new start-up would be stimulated by educational assistance provided by a university.

Entrepreneurship education, which plays a critical role in forming entrepreneurial drive and intention among individuals, improves entrepreneurial ability and orientation to encourage entrepreneurial intention among university students (Ferreira and Trusko, 2018). Due to COVID-19, leading to a financial downturn and a significant increase in the unemployment rate considering the recent international crisis, entrepreneurship education has gained a higher exposure, reputation, and possessions than it has ever been (Secundo et al., 2021). Since multiple studies have established a strong correlation between entrepreneurial education and SE, entrepreneurial education has received considerable attention from universities, policymakers, and entrepreneurial researchers (Martín and Cuervo-Arango, 2017; Naveed et al., 2021). In contrast to other scientific fields, entrepreneurship education offers a potential means of guiding individuals on how to cope with the COVID-19 situation (Ratten and Jones, 2021). Moreover, the ongoing pandemic coronavirus has created serious obstacles for academic institutions in teaching and learning and forced them to move to online-based entrepreneurial education by technology adoption to ensure students’ greater degrees of readiness on the contextual and situational conditions, including COVID-19 (Rahmat et al., 2021; Ge et al., 2022; Zhou et al., 2022). Higher education focusing on entrepreneurship requires students to acquire entrepreneurial insights and skills and eventually start a business entity after university degrees. Even though entrepreneurial education plays a crucial role in setting up a new entrepreneurial venture, university support is also vital for entrepreneurship (Saeed et al., 2015; Sidratulmunthah et al., 2018). Earlier studies have indicated that an individual’s education level is associated with their intelligence, competence, confidence, and problem-solving capabilities (Baier-Fuentes et al., 2018). Entrepreneurs with strong business studies backgrounds are more inclined to lead consumer-focused companies (Ganotakis and Love, 2012). The perception and evaluation of students’ entrepreneurial intention need particular importance to design effective academic programs concerning entrepreneurship and business growth (do Paço et al., 2011). Mohamad et al. (2015) suggested that entrepreneurial education, including formal and informal education, should be incorporated in the study curriculum to foster entrepreneurial intentions.

Networking is increasingly acknowledged as a crucial element of the entrepreneurial process, and it has emerged as a prominent topic in entrepreneurial studies (Hansen, 1995; Jack et al., 2010). Networks are regarded as a viable source of knowledge, namely the cognitive process of gathering and integrating knowledge, deriving meaningful learning experiences, and producing innovative solutions based on existing knowledge (Soetanto, 2017). An entrepreneurial network is widely acknowledged as being crucial to the entrepreneurial process in the literature on entrepreneurial networks (Chen and He, 2011). Being in an entrepreneurial network is associated with an individual’s capability to start a business efficiently. That is why entrepreneurs must consider the importance of networks in their decision-making process (Elston and Weidinger, 2019). In a number of research findings, entrepreneurial social networking has been identified to have a key positive influence in analyzing entrepreneurial intention (Ng and Rieple, 2014; Ruiz-Palomino and Martínez-Cañas, 2021). Access to entrepreneurial social networks, and hence to essential resources and skills for launching a new firm, may thus serve as a stimulus for progressing through the start-up process and achieving greater success (Wang et al., 2007). Entrepreneurial social networking is gradually receiving exposure in relation to education, with significant implications for changes and adjustments in the teaching and learning field, both specifically for academic as well as research purposes, and initially focused on social relations (Wei et al., 2019). Moreover, in the post-COVID era, the social network is playing an increasingly important role in influencing university students’ learning behavior, which is critical to achieving sustainable education (Abbas et al., 2019a). Student usage of social media and networking technologies at university has grown with a high rate of acceptance; thus, students can better understand social entrepreneurship by using these platforms more broadly (Oprica, 2013; Hamirul Hamizan Roslan et al., 2019). Since students’ perceptions of the usefulness of a network differed, they functioned as a source for evaluating the effectiveness of the entrepreneurial social network.

This suggested research model was developed with the primary goal of evaluating the relationship among entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial social networks, and university students’ intentions toward social entrepreneurship. Three variables have been incorporated into this suggested study’s proposed model. Entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial social network are the dependent variables in this suggested research model, and this study includes social entrepreneurial intentions as a dependent variable. The structural equation modeling (SEM) approach is suited for this study since the model suggested here incorporates independent and dependent variables (Yan and Yan, 2016; Abbas et al., 2020). Moreover, researchers may readily build up and evaluate hypothetical links between theoretical constructs and those between the constructs and their observable indicators using SEM when there are adequate respondents (Deng et al., 2018). Again, structural equation modeling offers a viable technique for examining associations between latent constructs, particularly important for knowledge-based entrepreneurship (Audretsch et al., 2008). Among the variance-based SEM techniques, partially least squares modeling (PLS) is considered to be the most completely developed and comprehensive system (Henseler, 2017). In comparison to CB-SEM, it is more robust and effortlessly combines both formative and reflecting constructs fitting with both small and large samples (Hair et al., 2011). PLS-SEM, using SmartPLS software can facilitate structural equation modeling solutions with almost any degree of complexities in the structural model and/or constructs (Ringle et al., 2012; Hair et al., 2017). Following a thorough review of the scholarly literature, Figure 1 depicts the conceptual framework for the proposed model.

From the literature, it is evident that the majority of internationally acclaimed social enterprises exist in the South Asian region (Reddy et al., 2013; Agrawal and Sahasranamam, 2016). Moreover, research also found that students from emerging nations are more likely to visualize themselves as potential entrepreneurs in the future than those in developed countries (Davey et al., 2011). Therefore, university students, most preferably business students, are usually preferred for evaluation of entrepreneurial intent, considering their representations among individuals engaging in business decision-making and the diversity of entrepreneurial insights, attitudes, and perceptions to this purpose (Krueger and Carsrud, 1993; Lanero et al., 2015; Teixeira and Forte, 2017). Since the entrepreneurial intention is not a clearly measurable factor, a structural equation method is deemed to be adequate (do Paço et al., 2011). Therefore, a convenience sampling technique was used for obtaining a sample of respondents from the public universities in Chattogram, Bangladesh, where entrepreneurship courses have been offered. According to Boomsma and Hoogland (2001), the sample size should be larger than 200 as a standard in most circumstances. Again Reinartz et al. (2009) mentioned that PLS seems to be the preferred approach in all circumstances, where the sample size is less than 250. The 392 respondents’ sample consisted of undergraduate and postgraduate business students for this study.

The current study is carried out through a self-administered questionnaire comprising closed-ended questions. A Likert five-point scale was utilized where the “1” was labeled as “strongly disagree,” and “5” was known as “strongly agree.” Research variables and their measurements are depicted in Table 1.

The analysis study discusses two different forms of a hypothesis: direct and mediating. Descriptive statistics has estimated the profile of the respondents. SPSS 23 software is being used for the factor analysis, and inferential statistics is carried out to evaluate the direct and mediating hypotheses using SmartPLS 3.0 software.

The current study has analyzed a simple mediation approach where the impact of entrepreneurship education on SEI might well be mediated by mediating variable entrepreneurial social networks. According to Baron and Kenny (1986), a mediating effect is obtained if the independent and mediator variable is constrained, and the previously pertinent relationship of the independent variable with the dependent variable found significant will significantly diminish. After estimating the effect of mediation of entrepreneurial social networks on the relationship between entrepreneurship education and students’ SEIs through the bootstrapping approach, it is estimated that entrepreneurial social network mediates the relationship between entrepreneurship education and SEI. Initially, entrepreneurship education affects SEIs, and it is statistically significant at 0.01 level (Figure 2); when the entrepreneurial social network is introduced as a mediator, the coefficient value and its T-value decrease (β = 0.214, T = 5.268), although it remains significant. This indicates that the relationship between entrepreneurship education and students’ SEIs, which was statistically significant before, changed significantly with the inclusion of entrepreneurial social networks in the model. It means that there is a mediation effect of entrepreneurial social networks in explaining the relationship between entrepreneurship education and SEI, and hence from the findings, H4 is supported. According to Nitzl et al. (2016), if both the direct and indirect effects are proven to be significant, it is considered partial mediation. That is to say, entrepreneurial social network partially mediates the association between entrepreneurship education and SEIs concerning university students (Table 6).

Earlier studies predicting SEI incorporated social networking with personality traits (Nga and Shamuganathan, 2010) and perceived supports (Tran and Von Korflesch, 2016; Younis et al., 2020). Again, identifying the role of education in SEI, Shahverdi et al. (2018) recognize obstacles to SEI by moderating the educational role, and Hockerts (2018), in effect, focuses on the link between the experience-based learning process and the movement toward social entrepreneurship. Therefore, it is evident that entrepreneurship education is basically concerned with generating innovative skills and knowledge, albeit less intention was paid to the social network (Nielsen and Gartner, 2017). Moreover, no research highlighted the importance of entrepreneurial social networking in entrepreneurship education while studying SEI. Moreover, entrepreneurial social networking has also not been considered in earlier studies as a mediating variable in developing SEI. The noteworthy finding of this study is the significant role of entrepreneurial social networking in students’ entrepreneurship education while developing SEI; therefore, more comprehensive research is required in social entrepreneurship that incorporates entrepreneurial social networking as a critical factor in developing social entrepreneurs in higher education institutions. Schøtt (2017) argued that platforms for enhancing entrepreneurial intentions need education as human capital and social networking as social capital. In this regard, this study makes a significant contribution to theory by investigating the entrepreneurship education system and acknowledging entrepreneurial social networking as a critical mediating variable that significantly impacts SEI, thereby generating economic rent in the society. This study also confirms that entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial social networking, and SEI are truly interdependent and that these have a direct and an indirect impact on social entrepreneurship development in particular and the society and economy in general. Our findings add value to the social entrepreneurship theory and encourage research exploring the interaction between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial social networking as a catalyst for social entrepreneurship development in different emerging and mature economies.

This research undoubtedly has strategic importance from an entrepreneurial and managerial perspective. Without awareness of the strategic implication of social networking, it is almost impossible for a social entrepreneur to formulate and implement strategies in a proactive manner for the growth and development of the enterprise. After gaining knowledge about critical issues that drive social entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurs can take positive steps to acquire, control, and allocate the economic resources at the right time in the right place for the right purpose to achieve predetermined social entrepreneurial goals followed by missions and visions and thereby fulfill the often-incompatible expectations of various stakeholders. And undoubtedly, the university will work as the pollination ground for young entrepreneurs where they will be guided and inspired as future social entrepreneurs. The interest in social entrepreneurship is continuously growing among young students because of its promising contribution to addressing pressing challenges and the socio-economic consequences for humankind. Given that SEI depends on education, university students can get a direct orientation toward SEI if an adequate infrastructure for the entrepreneurship education system is ensured, which seems impossible without an entrepreneurship oriented social network. Moreover, emerging economies facing numerous socio-cultural challenges, like Bangladesh, can utilize entrepreneurial social networking in the entrepreneurship education system to increase SEI motivation by providing experiential learning opportunities alongside formal university education.

This research adds important insights into the contribution of social networking in entrepreneurship education institutions that are useful for developing effective education policies. This study shows that academic institutions focused on entrepreneurship education play a critical role in promoting and developing social entrepreneurship by successfully integrating social networking with entrepreneurship education, which might encourage social transformation and generate job opportunities. This study also suggests that university authorities should offer students entrepreneurship education programs and networking with recognized entrepreneurs who can provide critical experiential learning opportunities from practice in the real world.

Recently, the outbreak of the pandemic COVID-19 has triggered a significant crisis in the overall education sector. Hence, the current crisis provides an opportunity for academicians to consider and encourage possible alternative solutions through forming communities and sharing experiences in entrepreneurial social networks that can help students develop intention toward social entrepreneurship to deal with the crisis. This study implies that integrating entrepreneurial social networks with entrepreneurship education can offer active learning assistance and more incredible opportunity to overcome challenges. Therefore, academic staff needs to be better prepared by providing appropriate training to build student support systems in a crisis that can encourage new positive participation and social resilience, which benefit students and their education, university stakeholders, and society.

As the current exploratory study method applied PLS-SEM and convenience sampling with limited respondents, future researchers should re-examine our findings from different perspectives and model the proposed relationships with larger samples selected by probability-based sampling and a covariance-based SEM. In order to do this, researchers can extend the size of the data considering other urban and rural locations and contexts in Bangladesh and the South Asian region. As the research was undertaken in Bangladesh, comparative analysis in other emerging economies could test the research design presented here to better understand the sources of entrepreneurial intentions in other South Asian and South-East Asian countries with some shared cultural context and socio-economic similarity exists. Since the current research is based on a cross-sectional study and assumes that the entrepreneurial action results are limited, a longitudinal study can add new insights by comparing short, medium- and long-term development patterns of SEI over the span of several years moving through the education system. Moreover, a generalization of our results may be limited by the context of our data collection being limited to Chattogram, Bangladesh.

According to the findings of this study, the mediating effect of entrepreneurial social networks between entrepreneurship education and SEI in the contexts of Bangladesh was critically analyzed, taking into account both public and private university business students. In line with the previous study undertaken in geographically and culturally disparate nations, the findings point in the direction of additional investigation into the interrelationship between entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial social networks, and the SEI. As a result, a comprehensive evaluation is necessary to ensure that each factor works in harmony to produce value and achieve predetermined social entrepreneurial goals for socio-economic progress.