How university entrepreneurship support affects college students’ entrepreneurial intentions: An empirical analysis from China

Abstract

Given the major role of new enterprises founded by university alumni in creating employment and promoting economic development, it is well known that Chinese universities have implemented plenty of impressive initiatives to support students’ entrepreneurship. However, little is yet known about how students evaluate university entrepreneurship support and how it affects students’ entrepreneurial intentions. This study utilizes 13,954 recent college graduates from Chinese higher education institutions as a sample and aims to examine students’ perceptions of the support they received from universities and its influence on students’ entrepreneurial intentions. The results illustrate that students are not very satisfied with various university en-trepreneurship supports. Findings also indicate that university entrepreneurship support positively impacts students’ entrepreneurial intentions, although it is not a very strong relationship. Moreover, university entrepreneurship support positively affects entrepreneurial attitude, subjective norms, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy, which in turn determine entrepreneurial intention. Entrepreneurial attitude, subjective norms, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy play a mediating role between university entrepreneurship support and entrepreneurial intention. The study contributes to the entrepreneurial literature theoretically and provides practical recommendations for policymakers and university administrators in China to reconsider and improve their entrepreneurship supports to encourage more students to become entrepreneurs.