AI-Assisted Business Ideation as a Technology–Cognition–Institutional Pathway to Entrepreneurial Intention: A Serial Mediation Model of Perceived Feasibility and Entrepreneurial Consultancy Services

Abstract

Generative AI has significantly reduced the effort and expense of developing and refining venture ideas, without eliminating the uncertainty and resource limitations of executing a venture. This research examines the potential of AI-assisted business ideation (AIBI) to drive behavioral change in accessing entrepreneurial support infrastructure. The study uses technology-cognition-institutional framework to examine the relationship between AIBI and perceived feasibility (PF) and entrepreneurial consultancy services engagement (ECS) and how these two variables mediate the relationship between AIBI and entrepreneurial intentions (EI). The study analyzed data from 319 university students in Pakistan using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). It evaluated the reliability and validity of the measurement model and examined structural relationships through bootstrapping with bias-corrected confidence intervals. Findings indicate that AI-based business ideation positively affects perceived feasibility, which in turn enhances engagement with entrepreneurial creative strategies (ECS).Moreover, ECS positively and significantly affect entrepreneurial intention, this in turn has a positive and significant direct effect on AIBI. The pathway from AIBI to perceived feasibility to engagement in entrepreneurial consultancy services to entrepreneurial intention is significant, emphasizing that AIBI affects entrepreneurial intention both cognitively and institutionally. This study extends AI entrepreneurship research by showing that AI's effects on entrepreneurial intention go beyond boosting entrepreneurial cognition. This study also contributes to existing intention models by conceptualizing entrepreneurial consultancy services as an endogenous behavioral mediator rather than a contextual condition, offering a more complete explanation of AI-enabled ideation's role in entrepreneurial readiness.