Abstract
Under the background of innovation and entrepreneurship (IE) driving economic development and transformation, it is of great significance to cultivate talents who dare to innovate and have the ability to IE. By stimulating IE potential of college students and improving their willingness to IE and on the basis of understanding the current situation of college students' IE, we explore the relevant factors affecting the willingness of college students to innovate and start a business. From two aspects of internal and external factors, this paper divides the modules that affect IE intention of college students into individual characteristics, self-awareness, school education, and environmental factors. Then, we use the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to calculate the weight value of each influencing factor so as to determine and analyze the key influencing factors. Finally, according to the existing problems of college students’ IE, we put forward countermeasures and suggestions to improve IE willingness of college students from the perspectives of school education and government policy.
1. Introduction
With the development of China’s economy and society and the rapid progress of higher education, the number of college graduates in China increased from 21000 in 1949 to 90.9 million in 2021 [1]. The employment of college graduates is related to economic development and social stability, and all departments attach great importance to it [2]. Under the background of the current global epidemic of new coronavirus, many countries and regions are facing the risk of economic recession, and the employment problem is becoming increasingly serious [3]. Therefore, promoting IE in the whole society is an important method to solve the employment problem and promote the development of industrial upgrading [4, 5]. IE is a kind of entrepreneurial activity based on innovation [6]. The content of innovation can be a point in technology, products, services, management, and so on [7]. IE activities are to achieve innovation in these different fields and apply the content of innovation [8]. Intention refers to the individual targeted thinking and conscious planning and putting ideas into practice [9]. Specifically in entrepreneurship, the focus is to have a strong entrepreneurial intention and to implement entrepreneurial behavior in specific actions [10], so entrepreneurial intention is the basis and premise of entrepreneurial behavior [11].
As the main force of IE, college students’ entrepreneurial intention is not only related to the probability of college students’ participation in entrepreneurial activities but also affects the progress and strength of the national IE strategy [12–14]. As a subjective behavior, intention is easily influenced by other factors [15]. Therefore, in the face of the grim reality of college students’ entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial success rate at this stage, it is of great significance to explore the influencing factors of IE intention of college students and put forward the path to improve their entrepreneurial intention [16–18]. First, it can not only improve the urgent need of college students’ self-employment rate but also deepen the reform of IE education [19]. Second, it is helpful to improve college students’ cognitive level of IE and promote college students to treat IE activities more actively [20]. Finally, we analyze the key factors affecting college students’ IE and put forward development countermeasures and suggestions, which is helpful to improve the IE ability of college students [21].
Therefore, this paper chooses three measurement structures from individual, school, and society to study the influencing factors of college students’ willingness to innovate and start businesses based on the AHP and builds a research model of influencing factors of college students’ intention to innovate and start businesses. The idea of this study is shown in Figure 1. It can not only improve the pertinence of implementing IE education but also provide reference for the government to formulate practical IE policies so as to stimulate the entrepreneurial willingness of college students and solve the employment problem of some college graduates.
2. Related Work
At present, there are many researches on the influencing factors of college students’ willingness to innovate and start a business, and the theoretical circle has accumulated abundant research results from multiple perspectives [22–24]. Typical examples are based on the theory of planned behavior to analyze the impact of entrepreneurial attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control on entrepreneurial intention and verify the applicability of this theory [25]. In order to study the factors affecting IE and their degree of influence, Yu et al. [26] studied the development background, development status, and internal and external environment of IE from the perspective of cloud analysis and constructed an evaluation index system for IE, which took Internet factors into account. Then they verified the validity of the constructed index system and evaluation analysis method with an example. The results showed that it is reasonable and scientific to evaluate IE from the perspective of cloud analysis. Zhuo et al. [27] took China as an example to analyze the reasons for the low entrepreneurial enthusiasm and success rate of college students from the perspectives of entrepreneurship policy, entrepreneurship education, and entrepreneurship capital. The research found that the entrepreneurship policy made by the state has a great impact on the entrepreneurial intention of college students. The reason is that entrepreneurship policy has an important impact on both entrepreneurship environment and entrepreneurship education, and entrepreneurship education plays an intermediary role between entrepreneurship policy and entrepreneurial intention. In addition, venture capital also has a positive impact on college students’ entrepreneurial intention. Chen et al. [28] believed that enterprises need college students with innovative ability to work for them if they want to improve their innovation ability and core competitiveness. For college students, entrepreneurship and employment are two options after graduation. Therefore, they use the literature research method, questionnaire survey method, and structural equation model to analyze and study the factors that may affect college students’ choice of entrepreneurship or employment. The results show that local attraction and family environment are the key influencing factors, and both of them have a positive impact on college students’ entrepreneurial and employment intention, attitude, and subjective norms. Yue et al. [29] analyzed the impact of college students’ behavioral attitudes, subjective norms, behavioral control perception, and entrepreneurship education on college students’ entrepreneurial intentions. Then the paper carried out statistical analysis and empirical research on the data by issuing questionnaires to six universities. The results showed that entrepreneurship education in colleges has the most significant impact on college students' entrepreneurial intention. The results are helpful to further promote and develop entrepreneurship education in universities in the future.
3. Analysis on the Influencing Factors of IE Intention of College Students
3.1. Basic Principles and Thoughts on Selecting Influencing Factors
At present, there are many analyses on the influence of IE intention of college students. Because college students’ IE will be affected by many aspects such as from all walks of life, scholars analyze the factors that may affect IE intention of college students from different angles. Therefore, on the basis of combining the previous research on IE intention of college students, this paper selects the influencing factors of IE intention of college students combined with some basic principles, as shown in Figure 2. Finally, we construct the theoretical model of the influencing factors from the internal and external factors, as shown in Figure 3.
3.2. Influencing Factors of IE Intention of College Students
According to the theoretical model of influencing factors of IE intention of college students, we summarize four influencing factors, including individual characteristics, self-awareness, school education, and environmental factors, and the specific influencing factors are shown in Figure 4.
Individual characteristics refer to various characteristics of college students themselves. The basic information includes gender, age, educational background, major, and whether a university holds a position. Personal basic information has different levels of influence on college students’ willingness to innovate and start a business. In general, men are more willing to innovate than women. Personal education level is positively correlated with the IE willingness of college students. Compared with the ordinary people with no technical ability, college students with certain professional and technical knowledge have higher IE willingness. Students of science and engineering have stronger IE willingness than students of literature and history. Students who have held positions in student associations, other associations, or classes during the university are more willing for innovations.
Self-awareness refers to the individual's self-awareness and understanding of the knowledge, resources, skills, and external environment necessary for their IE activities. Everyone has his own life goals, and different life goals need to be achieved through different ways. For college students, there are many common forms of employment after graduation, including college entrance examination, civil servants, enterprise employment, and entrepreneurship. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, man is a craving animal, and what he does is because of his needs and goals. Goals guide human action to meet their own needs, and to achieve their goals requires the corresponding capacity and conditions to support. So when a person thinks he is ready to achieve a goal, he is more likely to put ideas into action.
School education refers to the education and training of IE courses and development received by students during school. The goal of school education is to help students develop knowledge and skills related to IE so as to promote students to carry out IE activities in future personal development. We believe that IE education in schools has a significant positive impact for students to understand the connotation of IE and establish the intention of IE.
Environmental factors refer to the cognition and attitude of IE activities in the whole social environment. In the development of people’s behavior and attitude, part is achieved by observing and learning from others. When society as a whole forms a value of IE and people worship and yearn for entrepreneurs, there is reason to believe that more people will be more willing to carry out IE activities.
4. Application of Analytic Hierarchy Process in Influencing Factors Analysis on IE Intention of College Students
4.1. Analytic Hierarchy Process
After selecting many influencing factors of IE intention of college students, we need to determine the weight of each influencing factor so as to determine the key factors affecting IE intention of college students. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) divides the decision-making evaluation into the general target layer, the criterion layer, and the scheme layer, which has the advantages of systematicness, simplicity and practicability, and less quantitative data [30]. Its basic principle is to decompose the decision-making objectives by levels after determining the decision-making problems to be analyzed; then experts give the importance judgment matrix between the various factors and finally determine the weight of each factor according to the formula [31].
4.2. Weight Determination of Influencing Factors of IE Intention of College Students
4.2.1. Building the Hierarchical Structure Model
According to the influencing factors of IE intention of college students, the hierarchical structure model is divided into three levels: the target layer, the criterion layer, and the scheme layer, and the influencing factors of each layer are further explanations for the influencing factors of the previous layer. Specifically, we take the willingness of college students’ IE as the target layer, and then the four influencing factors corresponding to the internal and external factors as the criterion layer, and the specific indicators under each influencing factor as the scheme layer. The hierarchical structure model is shown in Figure 5.
4.2.2. Constructing the Judgment Matrix
After constructing the hierarchical structure model of influencing factors of IE intention of college students, we invited 10 experts to carry out the weight calculation of each influencing factor. Experts include the experts in the education industry, university educators, and entrepreneurial company managers. According to the scoring criteria of the 1–5 scale method, shown in Figure 6, and combined with their own theory and practical experience, the expert group constructs the judgment matrix of the criterion layer and the scheme layer:where A is the judgment matrix. ai and aj represent the elements in the hierarchy. aij represents the relative importance of the right.
4.2.3. Index Weight Calculation and Consistency Test
According to the judgment matrix and calculation formula given by the expert group, we can get the weight of each influencing factor. Notably, we need to test the consistency of the weight values. In summary, the process of determining the weight of influencing factors of IE intention of college students by the AHP is shown in Figure 7.
By calculating and testing the judgment matrix for many times, the weights of the influencing factors at the criterion level and the scheme level are shown in Figures 8–12. It can be seen from the figures that all the judgment matrices given by experts pass the consistency test, indicating that the weight value of the influencing factors of IE intention of college students calculated by us is reasonable and has practical significance.
4.3. Results Analysis
The weight values of each influencing factor in the criterion layer and the scheme layer calculated above are shown in Table 1. It can be seen from the table that the weight of individual characteristics and self-awareness in the criterion layer is 0.862, indicating that the internal factors affecting the willingness of college students to innovate and start a business are more important than external factors because good personal characteristics of college students are the prerequisites for entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship policy to achieve the expected goal. Only when college students actively accept the guidance of entrepreneurship education and the help of entrepreneurship policies, can they better cultivate advanced entrepreneurial thinking and standardize entrepreneurial activities. Only when college students continue to improve their comprehensive quality and self-awareness, can they develop good personal traits, so as to truly enhance entrepreneurial intention.
The weight of influencing factors in the scheme layer is sorted from low to high, and the total sorting weight of all factors is obtained, as shown in Figure 13. According to the total ranking diagram of the weight of the above influencing factors, we find that the most influential factor for IE intention of college students is the evaluation of their IE ability. It shows that college students’ professional skills, learning ability, and practical ability have great influence on their IE intention. We find that the factor that has the smallest impact on it is the regional environment. By analyzing the weight factor ranking in the top eight characteristic indicators, we find that individual characteristics and self-awareness have three specific indicators. Among the factors of individual characteristics, basic information and personality characteristics have a greater impact on IE intention of college students, followed by psychological quality. Among the self-awareness factors, IE ability evaluation has the greatest impact, followed by IE awareness and IE success expectation index. In addition, we find that the two influencing factors IE education level and curriculum setting in school education entered the top eight, indicating that they also have a certain impact on IE willingness of college students. Compared with other factors, environmental factors have weaker influence.
4.4. Countermeasures and Suggestions on Improving IE Intention of College Students
4.4.1. Strengthening IE Education in Colleges to Stimulate College Students’ Entrepreneurial Intention
Colleges can improve the level and quality of IE education from the following four aspects. First, innovate the university personnel training mechanism. Colleges introduce the concept of respect for equality and encourage teachers to improve the single passive relationship between teachers and students. By changing the traditional teaching mode, teachers enrich the form of IE education so as to greatly stimulate students' entrepreneurial inspiration. Second, strengthen the construction of entrepreneurial mentor team. Colleges and universities can incorporate social workers into the construction of their entrepreneurial tutors and build an education service system model led by school social work. On the one hand, the colleges support teachers to work in enterprises and exchange visits. On the other hand, the colleges hire well-known entrepreneurs, experts and scholars, and excellent alumni from all walks of life as part-time teachers. This is conducive to strengthening the construction of teaching staff so as to provide various guidance services for college students' entrepreneurship. Third, strengthen the practice system construction. Extracurricular practice activities of IE have a great impact on IE willingness of college students. However, most students lack practical experience, resulting in low practical ability. Therefore, in the future curriculum design, more attention should be paid to the development of practical courses and practical activities. Colleges can carry out various forms of extracurricular practice activities, such as IE project declaration, venture competition, and entrepreneurial base practice. Fourth, colleges make full use of existing teaching resources to establish an entrepreneurial platform characterized by specialty and entrepreneurial community culture. At the same time, colleges should do a good job of platform services and provide resources and personalized services for entrepreneurial teams and entrepreneurs from the perspective of social work advocacy.
4.4.2. Improving the Government’s IE Policies and Creating a Good Entrepreneurial Atmosphere
The relevant government departments should fully act and improve policies from the following three aspects so as to provide a good and sustainable entrepreneurial atmosphere for college students. First, increase IE policy support. In order to solve the lack of funds for college students' entrepreneurship, the government needs to increase financial investment. The government not only needs to formulate and improve relevant supporting entrepreneurship policies but also needs to open green channels to guarantee entrepreneurship guarantee loan, so as to stimulate college students' IE motivation. Second, implement preferential policies. The government can classify subsidies based on student-created business operations and jobs offered. Specifically, in terms of preferential tax policies, it is suggested that the relevant tax departments should also incorporate business tax and personal income tax into the preferential policy system. Relevant government departments can also provide capital grants or government subsidies to enterprises and financial institutions of large investment companies so as to provide training and suggestions for students’ entrepreneurship and solve the problem of some students’ entrepreneurial funds. In terms of IE loan process, the loan process should be simplified according to the actual situation of students, such as reducing the conditions for applying for loans. Third, strengthen entrepreneurship policy and entrepreneurship typical propaganda. Relevant aspects should carry out multichannel publicity through college students’ commonly used We-media platforms, such as micro-blog, WeChat, chattering, and Fast-Handed. At the same time, the government also needs to strengthen cooperation with universities and summarize and promote timely the good experience and good practices of universities in IE. In addition, targeted publicity and training are carried out for college population of different grades. Advanced models of IE play a leading role in demonstration, effectively guiding the IE of college graduates and constantly creating a good atmosphere for IE.
5. Conclusions
College students’ entrepreneurship has high social value and even economic value. It can not only solve a large number of employment problems and promote economic and social development but also promote national innovation consciousness and form a good social atmosphere. Promoting the development of IE strategy is a national strategy. Therefore, it is important to study the influencing factors of IE intention of college students. It has certain guidance and reference for the teaching design and arrangement of various IE courses in the future and can also provide reference for government departments to formulate IE policies. This paper comprehensively considers the internal and external factors affecting IE intention of college students and analyzes the influence of individual characteristics, self-awareness, school education, and environmental factors on college students' IE intention. For college students in school, many factors will have an impact on their future entrepreneurial intention, so we use the AHP and expert scoring method to determine the key factors affecting college students' innovative entrepreneurial intention. The study found that the most influential factor is self-awareness. Students are more willing to choose whether to start a business according to their perceived ability level, which conforms to the habit of ordinary people’s thinking and action process. The research conclusions of this paper are as follows.
First, on the basis of combining and analyzing a large number of research studies on college students' IE intention, we selected 16 influencing factors.
Second, we used the AHP to determine the weight value of influencing factors of IE intention of college students. The calculation results showed that the internal factors are more important than external factors.
Third, on the basis of considering the current situation of college students’ IE, we put forward the countermeasures and suggestions to improve the willingness of college students’ innovation and entrepreneurship, including strengthening the IE education in colleges and universities and improving the government IE policy.
However, since the theoretical knowledge and practical experience of this paper are not perfect, it is necessary to consider the factors affecting IE intention of college students from more aspects in the future and adopt a more advanced weight calculation method to determine the key influencing factors so as to find problems in practical application more scientifically and put forward suggestions for improvement.
Data Availability
The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.