







































Education, Language and Sociology Research 
ISSN 2690-3644 (Print) ISSN 2690-3652 (Online) 

Vol. 2, No. 1, 2021 
www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr 

Original Paper 

The Relationship between Undergraduate Students’ Personality 

Dimensions and Effectiveness of Entrepreneurship Education in 

China 
Chen Yu1 

1 School of Business, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China  

 

Received: January 31, 2021   Accepted: February 16, 2021   Online Published: February 21, 2021 

doi:10.22158/elsr.v2n1p105      URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/elsr.v2n1p105 

 

Abstract 

Purpose-This paper aims to identify the personality traits (agreeableness, openness to experience, 

extraversion, conscientiousness and neuroticism) of undergraduate students and effectiveness of 

entrepreneurship education in China. The difference among the personality traits of undergraduate 

students toward their effectiveness of entrepreneurship education is also analyzed. 

Design/methodology/approach-The personality dimensions questionnaires were completed by 209 

undergraduate students participants. Pearson correlation coefficients were extracted and regression 

analysis was performed. 

Findings-The study revealed that out of 209 respondents. Students having open and conscientious trait 

were increasingly more effectiveness of entrepreneurship education, the conscientiousness was 

identified as the most suitable personality trait for undergraduate students. A signifificant difference 

was also observed among all the personality traits of undergraduate students. 

Research limitations/implications-Participants retrospectively assessed their personality dimensions. 

Future research may use both teachers and students of participants to collect more accurate data on 

education practices or use observational methods. 

Social implications-This work seems to suggest that the students’ personality should be taken into 

account in entrepreneurship education. 

Originality/value-This is the first study to investigate the relationship between personality dimensions 

and effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. The paper provided further insights into determinants 

of entrepreneurship education. This article also had certain reference value to the policy makers who 

intend to improve the entrepreneurship education of the universities in China. It also provide a basis to 

improve the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. 

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Keywords 

personality traits, entrepreneurship education, openness to experience 

 

1. Introduction 

In 2015, the State Council of China put forward the strategic objectives for the development of 

innovation and entrepreneurship education in institutions of higher learning, specifying the nine major 

tasks that need to be taken to achieve the strategic objectives, China’s emphasis on innovation and 

entrepreneurship education not only reflects the new stage of higher education reform and development, 

but also reflects the urgent need for creative talents in the development of China’s knowledge economy. 

The entrepreneurship education in Chinese colleges and universities has come to the peak stage of its 

development, and the entrepreneurship basic course has been gradually brought into the required course 

of undergraduate colleges and universities. Even, colleges and universities entrepreneurship education 

is becoming more of a “business incubator” for future entrepreneurship. Indeed, innovation is the soul 

of a nation’s progress, the inexhaustible source of a country’s prosperity and the deepest national 

endowment. Young people, especially undergraduate students are the most dynamic and creative group 

in society, and they should take the lead in innovation and creation. Young people must have the 

courage to innovate and create. On the other hand, Undergraduate students are products of universities. 

Upon graduation, they become the source of manpower for developing the country’s economy. 

Undergraduate students are also the future mainstream of labor markets, employers are now paying 

more and more attention to employees’ initiative, risk-taking spirit, pioneering spirit, independent 

working ability, technical ability, social ability and management ability, as well as professional 

achievement. Entrepreneurship education in higher education aims at strengthening the 

self-employment consciousness and risk-taking spirit. By establishing the entrepreneurship curriculum 

system, reforming the teaching contents and methods, such as setting up the second classroom, 

providing the means of entrepreneurship education such as venture capital and business consulting, we 

can make up for the shortage of undergraduates’ entrepreneurial experience, at the same time, it 

systematically trains the undergraduates’ entrepreneurial skills and provides them with the necessary 

knowledge, social ability and management skill. These learning experiences are also better at 

improving undergraduates’ professional achievement. 

Most undergraduate students develop physically and mentally rapidly, their thinking is active, their 

thirst for knowledge is strong, and they initially have the ability to think independently, find problems 

and solve problems. However, some students who graduated from the university would have no crative 

thinking, even find it difficult to resolve their practical new problems on the job. But also, in a way, 

hinder the development of the labor market. In the era of science and technology power, talent is the 

foundation and core element of innovation. In deepening the curriculum reform of the new round of 

basic education, cultivating students’ effectiveness of entrepreneurship education is one of the core 

goals of quality-oriented education.  
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Among researchers, there appears to be reasonable consensus regarding the definitional elements of 

effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. Most researchers agreed that the two elements that define 

effectiveness of entrepreneurship education are novelty and usefulness (Shalley, 1991). According to 

Gurteen (1998), innovation is the taking of new or existing ideas and turning them into action. 

Effectiveness of entrepreneurship education is coming up with new ideas, which is the food of 

innovation. Effectiveness of entrepreneurship education is the foundation of innovation. Effectiveness 

of entrepreneurship education, known as the engine of scientific discovery, is usually defined as the 

ability to produce novel, unique and valuable products under specific circumstances.  

Therefore, as a core component of China’s working future, college students have a duty to improve 

their creative abilities to meet the demands of the technological age. As an important part of its national 

innovation system, administrators and educators at Chinese universities should, for their part, try to 

assess whether current educational practices, curricula and learning goals provide the kind of 

frameworks that inspire students to express their ideas and effectiveness of entrepreneurship education 

(Baker & Baker, 2012).  

Academics and educators should concern undergraduate students’ effectiveness of entrepreneurship 

education before they enter corporations, which are often said to be the “end user” in the supply chain 

of graduates for the labor market. Creativity is not something fuzzy or flaky, as some people think, is 

can be educated and applied in everyday innovation even by people who don’t perceive themselves as 

being creative (David Tanner, 1992). School education is the main channel for the cultivation of 

students’ creativity. Entrepreneurship education is the main channel to cultivate students’ creativity. 

Therefore, it is imperative to explore effective ways of entrepreneurship education. 

The society is changing deeply day by day, and there is a strong demand for college and university 

students’ creativity and entrepreneurship spirit. It is very important to implement creative 

problem-solving in higher education. However, educators have not fared well in their efforts to develop 

effective teaching methods to guide and foster the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education among 

students (Bourgeois-Bougrine et al., 2017; Lin & Nabergoj, 2014). It also provides a reference for 

setting up the carrier of effectiveness of entrepreneurship education cultivation, such as 

entrepreneurship education programme, or incorporating effectiveness of entrepreneurship education 

cultivation into interdisciplinary collaborative teaching. It is uncertain whether education has the 

strength and impact to induce this kind of intrinsic motivation and enjoyment in students, or to change 

students’ effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in such a way. It is likely that this creative 

tendency in individual personalities needs more time to grow.  

To the best of our knowledge, no study has examined the relationship between personality and 

effectiveness of entrepreneurship education until now. Before explaining our research assumptions, we 

will describe the conceptualisation of Big Five personality.  

 

 
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1.1 A Review on Big Five Personality Inventory 

The Big Five refers to five broad personality constructs that personality psychologists believe can be 

used to encapsulate an individual’s entire personality.  

The five factors are:  

(1) extroversion;  

(2) neuroticism;  

(3) agreeableness; 

(4) conscientiousness; and  

(5) openness to experience. 

The first trait, extroversion, is close to the meaning of self-confidence, in contrast to introversion 

(Digman, 1990). Extraversion is generally considered a positive personality trait and is associated with 

social skills and extroverts are more likely to get raises and promotions in the workplace, and therefore 

to achieve higher levels of career success (Heller et al., 2002). 

The second characteristic of neuroticism is the opposite of emotional stability. Neuroticism is 

associated with nervousness, irritability, and high anxiety. People with high neuroticism scores have 

poor emotional control and are prone to anger (John & Srivistava, 1999). According to Heller et al. 

(2002), those who are more neurotic pay more attention to negative events and therefore seem to 

experience more of them. While neuroticism is thought be useful for some very detail-oriented jobs, 

generally neuroticism is seen as a negative trait. According to Seibert and Kraimer (2001), neuroticism 

scores can predict dissatisfaction with one’s career (Seibert & Kraimer, 2001). 

The third trait, agreeableness, has also been described as likeability or compliance. Agreeable people 

are described as courteous, flexible, trusting, good-natured, cooperative, forgiving, tolerant, and 

good-hearted (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Digman, 1990). Seibert and Kraimer (2001) refer to the 

construct as a continuum ranging from soft-hearted, good-natured, and trusting, at one extreme to 

cynical, rude, and suspicious at the other. More agreeable workers, while good team players, often are 

not ruthless enough to succeed in career. They are less able than other employees to shirk blame for bad 

performance and take credit for good performance (Seibert & Kraimer, 2001). However, several studies 

suggest that police officers those who were less agreeable engage in more workplace misconduct 

(Cuttler & Muchinsky, 2006). Black (2000) found agreeability to be the only Big Five trait that was not 

related to police training performance.  

Fourth, openness are described as imaginative, curious, original, broad-minded, and artistically 

sensitive (Barrick & Mount, 1991). Barrick and Mount (1991) found that while openness was not 

associated with police performance. However, many researchers believed that openness is most closely 

related to intelligence, with people with high scores having better intelligence, and people with low 

scores often not interested in new things (Digman, 1990). 

Finally, conscientiousness indicates the individual’s degree of organization, persistence, and motivation 

in goal-directed behavior. This trait has been associated with educational performance and motivation 
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(Barrick & Mount, 1991). Some personality psychologists argue that the core trait is dependability, 

because those with high conscientiousness scores are careful, thorough, responsible, and organized. 

Other psychologists posit a slightly different version, with the trait being an expression of volition or 

will to achieve. 

Hans-Georg Wolff and Sowon Kim (2012) examined the relationship between the Big Five traits and 

six networking behaviors in samples of employed individuals. They found extraversion and openness to 

experience were related to networking behaviors. 

1.2 A Review on Entrepreneurship Education 

Schumpeter (1911) defined entrepreneurship as a person who breaks the existing economic order, 

creates and benefits from new structures by introducing new products and services, or by creating new 

organizational forms, or by developing new raw materials. According to Hamilton and Harper (1994), 

entrepreneurs are people who take certain risks in order to take advantage of inventions. Thompson 

(1999) thought entrepreneurs are people who can identify opportunities and take advantage of new 

business opportunities. Among researchers, there appears to be reasonable consensus that entrepreneurs 

are those who have a unique intuition, mindset, inspiration or vision, the ability, willingness and ability 

to conceptualize ideas and implement a business plans, and see change as an opportunity to create 

value. 

Souitaris et al. (2007) concluded that an effective entrepreneurship programme was defined as one 

which is able to influence entrepreneurial intentions. However, Cheng, M. Y. (2009) indicated the 

entrepreneurial education programmes conducted in Malaysia fail to create an impact to influence 

students to take up entrepreneurial challenges. From the findings above, the key to becoming an 

entrepreneur is personality, an innate trait that can not be trained. Therefore, it is impossible to teach 

people to be entrepreneurs. 

In contrast, previous studies have shown that entrepreneurship education does play an important role in 

fostering entrepreneurship among students (Ronstadt, 1987; Katz, 2003; Solomon et al., 2002; 

Robinson & Hayes, 1991; Sexton & Upton, 1984). Kolvereid and Moen (1997) noted that students who 

took entrepreneurship courses were more likely than other students to face the challenges of starting a 

business and were more interested in starting a business. Webb et al. (1982) argued that students who 

participated in an entrepreneurship programme were more likely to start their own business than other 

students who did not participate in an entrepreneurship programme.  

Ibrahim and Soufani (2002) believed entrepreneurship education plays a critical role in identifying and 

shaping the characteristics of entrepreneurs. Other studies have pointed out that entrepreneurship 

education, especially education that provides technological training, is crucial to enhance entrepreneurs’ 

innovation skills in an increasingly challenging environment (Clarke, 1990; Menzies & Paradi, 2003). 

Creativity is the foundation of entrepreneurship, David Tanner (1992) pointd out creativity is not as 

vague as some people think, and even those who do not think of themselves as creative can be educated 

and applied in everyday innovation. 
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Entrepreneurship education is not just about business management or entrepreneurship. It is about 

preparing undergraduates for careers. It is about learning how to combine experience, skills, and 

knowledge to prepare for a new career. Therefore, this study defines entrepreneurship education as 

learning to equip students with the skills and knowledge needed to start a new business, to learn to 

identify business opportunities, to build social networks, to focus on customer needs, and to create 

ideas, develop business plans, run businesses, and evaluate environmental, institutional, and political 

issues. Entrepreneurship education needs a different teaching pedagogy in which entrepreneurship 

education is linked to work-related learning (Dwerryhouse, 2001), experiential learning (Kolb, 1984), 

action-learning (Smith, 2001) and entrepreneurial training (Gibb, 1999). Just as Kirby (2002) 

emphasised that entrepreneurship education is different to “traditional” management studies as the 

latter may impede the development of the necessary entrepreneurial quality and skills.  

1.3 Hypotheses  

Based on the literature reviewed, it is expected that each of the Big Five traits will effect effectiveness 

of entrepreneurship education. 

First, extroversion will be positively related to effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. Starting a 

business requires a lot of social and interpersonal skills that extroverts tend to have more of. 

Second, neuroticism will be negatively related to effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. Starting 

a business is not a detail-oriented job, neuroticism has no direct benefit to entrepreneurial activity. On 

the contrary, people with high neuroticism can not control their own emotions and can not deal well 

with entrepreneurial partners. Therefore, neurotic people are not conducive to entrepreneurship, and not 

conducive to getting good entrepreneurial programme results. 

Third, agreeableness will be positively related to effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. 

Gregarious people are good at working with others, and there should be a positive correlation between 

entrepreneurial education and entrepreneurial activities with many collaborative tasks. 

Fourth, openness will be positively related to effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. Open people 

have imagination and creativity, and entrepreneurship requires creativity, so there is a positive 

correlation between the two. 

Last, conscientiousness will be positively related to effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. 

Entrepreneurial Learning is very tired, entrepreneurship is also very difficult, to overcome the 

difficulties of people with a sense of responsibility, certainly can get better entrepreneurial education 

performance. 

Further, it is expected that of the Big Five traits, openness will have the strongest effect on 

effectiveness of entrepreneurship education.  

In the light of this issue, this research is undertaken to determine the undergraduate students’ 

effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in Zhejiang Gongshang University, China. In addition, this 

study is conducted to identify the personality dimensions that influence their effectiveness of 

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entrepreneurship education. This research will examine the relationship between five personality 

dimensions and effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in China. 

 

2. Method 

2.1 Participants  

The sample consists of 209 Undergraduate Students (97 females and 112 males) between 19 and 21 

years (mean = 20.34 and standard deviation = 0.84). Participants administered a self-administered 

questionnaire on line that stated the purpose of the research. They answered questions regarding age, 

majors, gender and so on. The questionnaire responses also offered insight into students’ knowledge of 

entrepreneurship. All participants spoke Chinese as their first language and were recruited from 

Zhejiang Gongshang University. Some of them served as a leader in student union (20%, n = 41). The 

distribution of respondents in terms of their majors and specialisations is business and management, art, 

computer science, information technology, finance, economics, and signals a vocational predisposition 

towards following entrepreneurship activities. 

2.2 Measurement 

All instruments were measured on a five-point Likert scale where 1 was “strongly disagree” and 5 was 

“strongly agree”. Personality was measured by a 10-item scale Big fifive personality test (Goldberg, 

1993). In this study, measuring effectiveness of entrepreneurship education by intention to start a 

business upon graduation. Participants are asked to respond on a five-point Likert-type scale ranging 

from 1 (“strongly dislikely”) to 5 (“strongly likely”). Chronbach’s alpha of intention ranges from 0.74 

to 0.87 and test-retest reliability ranges from 0.77 to 0.87. At the same time ask the students several 

questions, such as what is entrepreneurship, how to write business plan. Teacher envaluated the 

effectiveness scores by five-point scale. 

The 209 respondents who claimed to understand the conception “entrepreneurship” offered various 

expression of entrepreneurship education ranging from: how to start a new business (46.8 per cent); to 

business management (35.8 per cent); and risk management (9.5 per cent). The findings reveal that the 

level of knowledge and understanding on the meaning and purpose of entrepreneurship education 

among students in China is not very high. 

2.3 Data Analysis  

IBM SPSS 24.0 was used for all statistics procedures. In the correlation analysis, variables were 

personality dimensions and effectiveness of entrepreneurship education’s subscales. In the regression 

analysis, we set the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education total score as dependent variable and 

the Big Five personality subscales scores as independent variables: agreeableness, openness to 

experience, extraversion, conscientiousness and neuroticism. 

 

 

 
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3. Result 

Descriptive statistics concerning effectiveness of entrepreneurship education resulted as follows: 3.23 

(0.12). Concerning the 63% of participants indicated that entrepreneurship education teached them 

much knowlegde. Observed five personality dimensions means and standard deviation values resulted 

as follows: agreeableness, 3.16, (0.51), openness to experience, 3.51, (0.71), extraversion, 3.16, (0.46), 

conscientiousness, 3.54, (0.32), and neuroticism, 3.04, (0.32).  

Pearson correlation coefficients were extracted. We observed a significant positive correlation between 

openness to experience and effectiveness of entrepreneurship education (r = 0.269, p < 0.001), a 

significant positive correlation between couscientiouness and effectiveness of entrepreneurship 

education a significant negative correlation between neuroticism and effectiveness of entrepreneurship 

education (r = 0.352, p < 0.001). Pearsons correlations among the study variables are presented in the 

Table 1. 

 

Table 1. Correlation Matrix of Variables (N=209) 

 Agreeableness            Open Extraversion   Couscientioune

ss  

Neuroticis  EEE   

Agreeableness 1 0.194 0.126 0.136 -0.256 0.194 

Openess  1 0.095 .0135 -0.164 0.27** 

Extraversion   1 0.145 -0.054 0.036 

Couscientiouness    1 -0.154 0.35** 

Neuroticism     1 -0.13 

EEE      1 

Notes. ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). 

 

Table 2 shows the stepwise multiple regression analysis. The independent variables included in the 

analysis were the five personality dimensions. According to the results of the regression analysis, 

openness to experience (t = 2.29, β = 0.37, p = 0.015) and couscientiouness (t = 3.44,β = 0.44, p < 

0.0001) can predict effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. More specifically, higher levels of 

openness to experience and couscientiouness predict higher effectiveness of entrepreneurship education 

scores.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Table 2. Results of Stepwise Multiple Regression to Predict EEE (N=209) 

Criterion 

Variable 

Predict 

variable            

β Beta    T ΔR2   S.E. p-Value  Variance Inflation 

Factor 

 OPEN 0.32 0.37 2.29 0.092 0.131 0.015 1.024 

 Counsci 0.58 0.44 3.44  0.142 0.001 1.03 

EEE Agreeab 0.18 0.14 1.09  0.122 0 1.01 

 Extrave 0.28 0.14 1.09  0.122 0 1.01 

 Neurotic -0.11 -0.038 -0.64  0.166 0 1.02 

 

4. Discussion 

There has been more attention paid to entrepreneurship education in the last 10 years than during the 

previous many years, in this science and technology age, teaching and enhancing the undergraduate 

students’ most valuable entrepreneurial skill is a major problem which universities face to. A full 

display of entrepreneurial skill is indispensable, not only for developing new products and technology, 

but also for managing any business, even any career. In a word, those undergraduate students with 

higher entrepreneurial skill will be more easily to gain career success and subjective well-being in the 

future, which is helpful to individuals but also to organizations because employees’ career success can 

eventually contribute to organizational performance. So, it is widely acknowledged that it is not only 

the responsibility of the university but also the responsibility of the organizations to promote individual 

entrepreneurial skill and knowledge.  

To our knowledge, our study is the first one investigating the relationship between personality dimensions 

and effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. In fact, the verification of this relationship is not surprising, 

and it has been concluded that personality is associated with organizational learning outcomes (Bamber & 

Castka, 2006). 

In entrepreneurship education, a key issue is how to teach entrepreneurial behaviour and support students to 

develop abilities and skills enabling them to perform entrepreneurial tasks (Colette et al., 2005). In this 

respect, effectiveness of entrepreneurship education is important in entrepreneurship education (Hamidi et 

al., 2008; Lin & Nabergoj, 2014). In efforts to develop and stimulate effectiveness of entrepreneurship 

education and creative problem-solving skills, educators emphasise practice-based learning. However, due 

to various constraints, we emphasize some case studies in the education curriculum to improve the 

entrepreneurial experience of students. 

The results show that the personality dimensions (conscientiousness and openness are) of undergraduate 

students can predict the effectiveness of their entrepreneurship education to some extent. Conscientiousness 

and openness are the most important factors in predicting the effects of entrepreneurship education. 

Conscientiousness emphasizes perseverance and diligence, which is necessary to do anything, not just to 

entrepreneurial activities, entrepreneurial education activities need students to wok hard in class and after 

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class. Openness to experience is characterized by curiosity, open mindedness, imagination, and a 

willingness to experiment with new technologies (Borkenau & Ostendorf, 2008; Goldberg, 1990). Ashton 

and Lee (2001) argued that openness is related to “the degree to which people engage in behavior, often 

leading to ideas that are generated or understood”. At the same time, the content of entrepreneurship 

education contains a large number of new ideas, need imagination, need creativity, therefore, students with 

these characteristics are easier to obtain and understand the essence of entrepreneurship education, more 

able to achieve good results of entrepreneurship education. 

We showed that effectiveness of education is influenced by two personality dimensions (openness to 

experiences and conscientionusness). Overall, this study contributes to our understanding of why some 

students engage more in entrepreneurial emcourse than others and which personality traits facilitate 

learning behaviors. In line with other studies, we provide evidence that personality matters in in achieving 

educational education results. Some may argued it is impossible to teach someone to become an 

entrepreneur and therefore entrepreneurship education is a waste of time. In fact, like this view is 

unrealistic. 

 

5. Conclusions 

Education is not an isolated thing, especially entrepreneurial education, is not blindly remember some 

knowledge that education has an effect. The effectiveness of entrepreneurship education is related to 

teaching contents, teaching methods and teachers’ skills, especially to students’ personality. When all the 

teaching contents and methods are the same, the students with high consciousness and high level of 

openness are more likely to achieve the good effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. 

The study provides an important exploratory analysis of the state of entrepreneurship education in China. 

The results show the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in China in matching students’ skill 

expectations with their skill acquisition. Thus, educational institutions need to review the existing 

curriculum and design a more appropriate curriculum to develop effective entrepreneurship programmes 

and enterprising individuals. The findings also indicate that the level of understanding on “what is 

entrepreneurship” is still low among the respondents selected in this study. 

The government, especially the ministry of education and the education providers should take seriously 

into this aspect and consider revising the existing education system and process. Unless some action and 

changes are taken to improve the current education system to impart essential entrepreneurial knowledge 

and skills, the country may struggle to meet the upcoming new challenges brought by the ever changing 

political, economic, social and technological environment in today’s global economy. 

5.1 Limitations and Future Research Suggestions 

Although this research adds to the literature on the relationship between predictors and undergraduate 

students’ effectiveness of entrepreneurship education, like all research, several limitations exist that should 

be addressed in future research. First, this study was limited by the set of factors that were proposed to be 

linked to effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. There are many predictors that have been examined 
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in previous models of effectiveness of entrepreneurship education, the study just proposed the impact of 

personality dimensions on effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. However, as found in other studies 

effectiveness of entrepreneurship education are sometimes effected by other variables, such as, 

entrepreneurship education programme, teaching method, teacher’s entrepreneurial experiences and so on. 

While this current study did not examine the relationship between education program and effectiveness of 

entrepreneurship education. So, future studies should capture their influence. 

Secondly, future research can provide additional information and extensions to these results. For example, 

more information is needed on the mechanisms through which personality dimensions into effectiveness of 

entrepreneurship education. How to evaluate the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education is also a 

problem worthy of further discussion. 

Finally, our study was conducted in a single university, just recruited participants of students, future 

research may recruit both other universities participants to collect more accurate data on education practices 

or use observational methods. 

 

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	Original Paper
	Chen Yu1
	1 School of Business, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China
	Abstract
	Purpose-This paper aims to identify the personality traits (agreeableness, openness to experience, extraversion, conscientiousness and neuroticism) of undergraduate students and effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in China. The difference amon...
	Design/methodology/approach-The personality dimensions questionnaires were completed by 209 undergraduate students participants. Pearson correlation coefficients were extracted and regression analysis was performed.
	Findings-The study revealed that out of 209 respondents. Students having open and conscientious trait were increasingly more effectiveness of entrepreneurship education, the conscientiousness was identified as the most suitable personality trait for u...
	Research limitations/implications-Participants retrospectively assessed their personality dimensions. Future research may use both teachers and students of participants to collect more accurate data on education practices or use observational methods.
	Social implications-This work seems to suggest that the students’ personality should be taken into account in entrepreneurship education.
	Originality/value-This is the first study to investigate the relationship between personality dimensions and effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. The paper provided further insights into determinants of entrepreneurship education. This article...
	Keywords
	Table 1. Correlation Matrix of Variables (N=209)
	References

