| Entrepreneurship can effectively stimulate economic growth and promote employment.It is seen as one of the major engines for social sustainable development.Stimulating the high-quality entrepreneurship of college undergraduates has become an important policy of the Chinese government.In recent years,universities have invested heavily on innovation and entrepreneurship education.However,the number of college undergraduates who have actually started a business stays low,and the level of graduates’ entrepreneurial intention is also low.Has the innovation and entrepreneurship education played its due role? Are students’ entrepreneurial intentions improved by entrepreneurial education? How to encourage college students to start a business? Public attention is thoroughly aroused to these issues.Research in the field of entrepreneurial intentions has received more and more attention,but there are divergent views on the proposition of the impact of entrepreneurship education on individual entrepreneurial intentions.Therefore,it is necessary to explore the impact mechanism of entrepreneurship education on college students’ entrepreneurial intentions,in order to enrich relevant theories,and improve entrepreneurship education in practice.Based on theories such as the Entrepreneurial Event Model(EEM),this study decomposes the impact of university entrepreneurship education on students’ entrepreneurial intentions.In addition,this study takes risk-related factors into consideration to reveal the internal mechanism.This is an empirical study and the assumptions are based on prior researches.Data are collected through questionnaires and the sample includes 440 college students from the South,the North,and other places in China.A total of 360 valid questionnaires are selected for analysis,and SPSS and AMOS are used for data analysis and model fitting.Results show that entrepreneurship education can increase entrepreneurial intentions,but the impact mechanism is complicated.Specifically,entrepreneurial education can increase students’ perceptions of entrepreneurial desirability and entrepreneurial intentions.Meanwhile it also allows students to be fully aware of entrepreneurial risks,which in turn reduces the perceptions of entrepreneurial feasibility and inhibits entrepreneurial intentions.The relationship between entrepreneurship education and risk perception is moderated by risk preference.Students with lower risk preference perceive higher entrepreneurial risk,which cause decline of perceptions of feasibility.The research explores a path of entrepreneurship education’s impact on college students’ entrepreneurial intentions,reveals the complexity of the role of entrepreneurship education,and enriches related theories.Finally,suggestions are made for university entrepreneurship education.On the one hand,it should pay attention to cultivate entrepreneurial culture;on the other hand,entrepreneurship education should strengthen students’ understanding of entrepreneurial risks,by teaching students according to their aptitude.It may help reduce blind entrepreneurship activities,and promote the quality and efficiency of entrepreneurship,in order to reduce waste of social resources. |
