Creative Education

2012. Vol.3, Supplement, 95-100

Published Online December 2012 in SciRes (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ce) DOI:10.4236/ce.2012.38b021

Entrepreneurial Intentions and Its Influencing Factors:

A Survey of the University Students in Xi’an China
Zhengxia Peng, Genshu Lu, Hui Kang
Institute of Higher Education, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China
Email: [email protected]

Received 2012

Based on a survey of 2,010 senior university students from nine universities in Xi’an, China, this paper
analyzes the student’s entrepreneurial intention level and its influencing factors. The results show that the
perceived subjective norm of university students has significantly positive influence on their entrepre-
neurial attitude and the entrepreneurial self-efficacy while all these factors influence their entrepreneurial
intentions significantly. This paper also examines the influence of other factors such as individual/psycho-
logical factors, family background factors and social environment factors, and further discusses its policy
implications.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurial Intention; University Students

Introduction some new models on the basis of modifying and criticizing

these models. For example, Elfving, Brännback, & Carsrud
Entrepreneurship is a process of creation and of realizing
(2009) pointed out those current entrepreneurial intentions
values for entrepreneurs (Morris & Jones, 1999). The entrepre-
models were often linear and static and put forth a Contextual
neurial activities play quite important roles in promoting eco-
Model of Entrepreneurial Intentions to avoid these limitations.
nomic and social development. For these reasons, in recent
By analyzing current researches about individual’s entrepre-
decades, the problems of entrepreneurship are focused by lots
neurial intentions and their influencing factors, some problems
of scholars and policy makers. Because of the development of
can be found. One is that the influencing factors involved in
mass higher education in China, the employment problem of
current researches are often a partial rather than a comprehen-
university graduates is more and more serious. To solve this
sive and systematic analysis. The other is that current re-
problem, Chinese government emphasizes promoting the em-
searches mainly uses statistical methods like descriptive statis-
ployment by entrepreneurship and starts to encourage and sup-
tics, variance analysis, regression analysis, cluster analysis and
port university graduates to create their own business. Univer-
path analysis, which are used to discuss the linear relation be-
sity graduates’ employment by starting their own business is
not only encouraged and advocated by government, but it is tween the independent variables and dependent variables and
also the actual choice of graduates. However, at present there is are hard to present the relations between variables as a whole
a low proportion of entrepreneurship in Chinese graduates. To (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). This inevitably leads to biased
promote the entrepreneurship of graduates and drive the em- results.
ployment by entrepreneurship, it is necessary to explore the To overcome these limitations in current researches, based
entrepreneurial intentions of university students and their in- on a sample survey conducted on 2,010 senior university stu-
fluencing factors. dents in nine different types of universities in Xi’an, China in
For more than fifty years, researches about entrepreneurship 2009, this paper gives a more systematical and overall discus-
can be divided into the following stages：in 1960s，after the sion about the influence of individual, family and social envi-
publication of The Achieving Society by McClelland(1961), ronment factors on the entrepreneurial intentions of university
researchers mainly focused on the effect of personality traits of students. Furthermore, in order to discuss relations between
entrepreneurs on their entrepreneurial behaviors. In 1980s and variables as a whole, this paper applies structural equation
1990s, researchers turned their attentions to the impact of indi- modeling to verify the relation between the entrepreneurial
vidual intentions of entrepreneurship on their entrepreneurial intentions of university students and their influencing factors.
behaviors. Meantime, the empirical study about entrepreneurial
intentions and their influencing factors emerged in large num- Literature Review
bers. Some researchers argued that compared with individual
Definition of Entrepreneurial Intentions and Their
personality variable; individual intentions of entrepreneurship
Measurements
were more effective and had stronger explanatory ability in
prediction of their entrepreneurial behaviors (Ajzen, 1987). Individual’s entrepreneurial intentions are the important va-
During this period, six major entrepreneurial intention models riables to predict their entrepreneurial behaviors. But research-
were proposed, including the Entrepreneurial Event Model by ers have no an identical definition about individual’s entrepre-
Shapro (1982), the Theory of Planned Behavior by Ajzen (1991) neurial intentions. On one hand, referring to individual’s entre-
and so on. Since the 21st century, some researchers put forth preneurial intentions, the current literatures adopt some similar

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 Z. X. PENG ET AL.

conceptions, like career orientation (Francis & Banning, 2001), 1977). Ajzen(1991) points out individual’s attitudes constitute
nascent entrepreneurs (Korunka,et al, 2003) and so forth. On the important influencing factors of their entrepreneurial inten-
the other hand, researchers often give operational definitions tions.
when they define individual’s entrepreneurial intentions, re- Krueger argue that individual’s entrepreneurial intentions are
sulting in discrepancy. This paper takes the senior university also impacted by their subjective norm which is influenced by
students who rarely engage in entrepreneurial activity as re- perceived expectation level from those who are important to
search objects. We define the entrepreneurial intention in this paper him or her like relatives, parents, friends, colleagues and so
as a mental orientation such as desire, wish and hope influen- forth to their certain behaviors and individual’s obedience to
cing their choice of entrepreneurship. these expectations (Krueger, 1993) .
Currently the measurement to individual’s entrepreneurial The relation between the self-efficacy of individual’s entre-
intentions includes single variable method and multivariable preneurship and their entrepreneurial intentions has been veri-
method. Single variable method is to measure individual’s en- fied by many researches (Chen, Greene & Crick, 1998). Krueger
trepreneurial intentions by single variables such as individual’s & Brazeal (1994) argue that individual’s judgment on the feasi-
expectation, preference, plan, behavioral anticipation. It can bility of starting a business comes from the judgment on their
also be divided into researcher judgment method and individual self-efficacy of implementing and planning their entrepreneuri-
self-report method. Even though the single variable method is al behavior. Boyd & Vozikis (1994) state that self- efficacy
simple and clear, its validity and reliability are not so ideal influences not only the formation of individual’s entrepreneuri-
because of over simplicity. Multivariable method is a method al intentions, but also the possibility of creating a firm in the
used by researchers to improve the validity and reliability of future.
measurement. They judge individual’s entrepreneurial inten- According to Garzón (2010), individual’s entrepreneurial
tions by multivariable or from various dimensions to reduce competence plays a determinant role in the early stage of start-
errors (Chen, Greene, & Crick, 1998; Van Gelderen, et al, ing a business. McClelland (1961) indicates that adults’ entre-
2008). preneurial intentions can be predicted by the entrepreneurial
competence in their childhood. Thereafter, some scholars study
The Influencing Factors of Individual’S on individual’s entrepreneurial competences and their impact
Entrepreneurial Intentions
on entrepreneurial intentions from different perspectives (Bird,
Researchers also have a deep and wide discussion on the in- 1995; Chandler & Jansen, 1992; Chen, Greene & Crick, 1998).
fluencing factors of individual’s entrepreneurial intentions Man(2000) concludes that entrepreneurial competences are the
while measuring their entrepreneurial intentions. They propose integrated abilities by which entrepreneurs succeed in imple-
many analyzing models, among which The Entrepreneurial menting entrepreneurial activities, including opportunity com-
Event Model by Shapero & Sokol (1982) and The Theory of petencies, relationship competencies, conceptual competencies,
Planned Behavior by Ajzen(1991) are the representative ones. organizing competencies, strategic competencies and commit-
Some researchers have proposed new models about entrepre- ment competencies. Even though at present a large number of
neurial intentions (Davidsson, 1995; Elfving, Brännback, & researches about entrepreneurial competences exist, they sel-
Carsrud, 2009; Krueger & Brazeal,1994). These models ana- dom discuss the relationship between entrepreneurial compe-
lyze many different factors affecting individual’s entrepre- tences and entrepreneurial intentions. Schmitt-Rodermund (2004)
neurial intentions. They can be divided into three categories: concludes that student’s entrepreneurial competences refer to
individual or psychological factors, family background factors their leadership, curiosity and entrepreneurial skills which are
and social and environmental factors. influenced by personality traits and family’s education.
Individual/psychological factors Some researchers find that the prior entrepreneurial expe-
Many researchers have explored the impact of individual’s riences may have impact on individual’s entrepreneurial inten-
gender on their entrepreneurial intentions. Some researchers tions (Krueger, 1993). Their prior entrepreneurial experiences
find that males have stronger intentions than females (Matthews can not only develop individual’s entrepreneurial intentions, but
& Moser, 1995). Some argue that the low entrepreneurial inten- can also accumulate experiences and skills for future entrepre-
tions for females because of their low self-efficacy. They may neurial activities. Some researches, however, indicate that the
avoid starting their own business for the lack of necessary ca- prior entrepreneurial experiences just have slight influences on
pability (Fielden, et al, 2003). Some stereotyped images caused individual’s knowledge of entrepreneurship and have no signif-
by their responsibilities of supporting the family, raising the icant impact on their entrepreneurial attitudes (Davidsson,
children may have negative influence on females’ entrepre- 1995).
neurial intentions (Lee, et al, 2011). Family background factors
Researchers also focus on the personality traits’ effect on in- Some researches discuss the impact of family background
dividual’s entrepreneurial intentions. Some researchers consi- factors on individual’s entrepreneurial intentions. Current re-
dered personality traits as an important factor. Compared with searches explain families’ impact on individual’s entrepre-
other people, entrepreneurs show some personality traits such neurial intentions mainly from role molding perspective and
as strong achivement orientation, strong individual control , believe parents play an important role in children’s entrepre-
willingness to take risks, endurance, and intelligence (Shaver, neurial career. Nevertheless, some researches do not think par-
1995), but other researchers hold that those personality traits ents’ behaviors would set examples to influence children’s
cannot be taken as an effective explanation of their choice of entrepreneurial intentions (Churchill,et al,1987). Entrepreneurs’
starting business (Gartner,1985). children do not proportionally become Entrepreneurs (Krueger
Some researches present that individual’s attitudes to entre- & Dickson, 1993).
preneurship are apparently related to their entrepreneurial be- Social environment factors
havior, which is mediated by intentions (Ajzen & Fishbein, Stephen, Urbano, & Hemmen (2005) state that social envi-

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 Z. X. PENG ET AL.

ronment factors like legal rules, government support is an im- trepreneurial Self-Efficacy (ESE), entrepreneurial Competence
portant factor influencing individual’s entrepreneurship. Scholars (EC), refers to the measuring scale by Davidsson (1995), Liñán
indicate that social environment factor is an adjusting variable & Chen (2009), Kautonen,et al,(2009), Man(2000), we design
which impacts individual’s entrepreneurial intentions by the items to measure these aspects. The results of principal com-
interaction with individual’s attitudes (Shapero & Sokol, 1982). ponent factor analysis show that their factor consisting of items
It is noteworthy that as Lüthje & Frank (2003) mentioned there can provide explanation of variance from 62.56% to 68.89%,
are both supporting and hindering factors among social envi- and the reliability coefficient of every aspects ranges from0. 82
ronment factors. to 0.88.
Based on literature review above, this paper will provide a Individual/psychological factors also include Prior Entrepre-
comprehensive analysis on the impact of individual/psycho- neurial Experiences (PEE) and so on.
logical factors, family background factors and social environ- Family background factors contain grandparents’ entrepre-
ment factors on individual’s entrepreneurial intentions. neurial experiences (GEE), parents’ and siblings’ entrepre-
neurial experiences (PSEE), relatives’ entrepreneurial expe-
Research Design riences (REE), and friends’ entrepreneurial experiences (FEE).
Social background factors include：
Research Sample Entrepreneurial Policy Supporting (ESP)：The measurement
We take senior university students from nine different types of supporting policies is judged by the student’s answer to the
of universities in Xi’an, China in 2009 as subjects of our re- item “presently our country support entrepreneurial activities
search. We take class as unit to investigate students from eleven greatly”.
majors in nine different universities which include national key Entrepreneurial Environment (EE)：The results of principal
universities, regular universities and independent colleges. Ap- component factor analysis show that the entrepreneurial envi-
proximately 2,450 questionnaires were distributed and 2,165 ronment factor consisting of two items can explain 81.81%
were returned. There are 2,010 valid questionnaires including variance and reliability coefficient is 0.79.
1241 males and 769 females with a valid rate of 92.84 percent. Entrepreneurial Resistance (ER)：It is measured from the
aspects of self-confidence, fund, time, family support, commer-
Instruments cial skills and entrepreneurial education. The results of princip-
al component factor analysis show it can explain 49.32% of
Every student was required to finish a questionnaire which
variance and the reliability coefficient is 0.79.
includes individuals’ characteristics, families’ social and economic
status, individual’s entrepreneurial intentions and their influencing The Analytic Model of Student’S Entrepreneurial
factors. Intentions
The measuring instrument of student’s entrepreneurial
By literature review, this paper constructs a conceptual mod-
intentions.
el which reflects the influence of individual/psychological fac-
We took instruments designed by Chen, Greene & Crick (1998)
tors, family background factors and social environment factors
and Van Gelderen, et al. (2008) as references in designing our
on university student’s entrepreneurial intentions(as shown in
measuring instrument of student’s entrepreneurial intentions.
Figure 1). The software such as SPSS and AMOS are used to
The measuring questions are design from the dimensions of
analyze survey data.
entrepreneurial interest, expectation, preparation, profession
preference with limitation and are compiled by Likert’s scale
Gender
with six grades of answers. The results of principal component
factor analysis indicate that the university student’s entrepreneurial PEE EA
intentions factor can be measured by 5 questions, which provides
65.46% explanation of university student’s entrepreneurial EC
intentions variance while the results of reliability analysis IO ER
indicate that reliability coefficient of the scale is 0.868.
The measuring instruments of influencing factors of univer- AO
sity student’s entrepreneurial intentions
RP
Analyzing the relevant literature, this paper discusses the SN EI
impact of individual/psychological factors, family background IC
factors and social environment factors on university student’s
GEE
entrepreneurial intentions (EI).
Individual / psychological factors: PSEE
personality traits refers to the measuring scale by Athayde
(2009), we design 12 items to measure the university student’s REE

personality traits whose results of principal component factor FEE ESE

analysis show that university student’s personality traits can be
measured from the dimensions of innovation orientation (IO), ESP
achievement orientation (AO), risk propensity (RP) and indi- EE
vidual control (IC), which can explain 71.50% of university
student’s personality traits variance and the reliability coeffi- Figure 1.
cient of every factor ranges from 0.75 to 0.83. Analytic Model for University Student’s Entrepreneurial In-
Entrepreneurial Attitudes (EA), Subjective Norm (SN), En- tentions and the Influencing Factors.

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 Z. X. PENG ET AL.

Results
The Current Situation of University Student’S
Entrepreneurial Intentions
This paper uses five items including entrepreneurial interests,
entrepreneurial expectations, entrepreneurial preparation and
profession preference with limitation to measure university
student’s entrepreneurial intentions. Students’ answers can be
divided into six grades (1 = extremely agree, 6 = extremely
disagree). We can see that, to the item “My goal is to become
an entrepreneur”, 48.8% students choose extremely agree and
agree while those choose disagree and extremely disagree ac-
count for 5.8%. So we can say the percentage of students who
take entrepreneurship as their goal is relatively high. To the
item “I will try all my best tocreate my own business”, 39.8%
students choose extremely agree and agree while those choose
disagree and extremely disagree account for 11.5%. This num-
Figure 2.
ber shows university students have high expectation to entre- Analysis on University Student’s Entrepreneurial Intentions and Their
preneurship. To the item “I’ve already prepared everything for Influencing Factors: Structural Equation Model (n=2,010).
starting a business”, 33.9% students show extremely agree and
agree while 13.9% of them show disagree and extremely disag- sample size (n = 2.010), it is easy to reach significance. GFI =
ree, which indicates that university students are actively pre- 0.935, RMSEA = 0.067, CFI ＝ 0.924, NNFI = 0.902. The
paring for starting their own business. Referring to the profes- values of the goodness of fit indexes suggest a reasonably high-
sion preference with limitation, the answers to item “Though fitting model.
failure, I will continue to create my own business until suc- When we systematically examine the influence of individu-
ceed” show that 40.0% students choose extremely agree and al/psychological factors, family background factors and social
agree while only 8.1% of them show disagree and extremely environment factors on university student’s entrepreneurial
disagree. To the item “Even though the strong rejection from intentions, we can see that: 1) In individual /psychological fac-
parents, I will still commit to starting my business”, 36.6% tors, university student’s prior entrepreneurial experience has
students show extremely agree and agree while only 11.4% of significantly positive impact on their subjective norm and en-
them show disagree and extremely disagree, which indicates trepreneurial self-efficacy while entrepreneurial competence
that even when they meet restrictions, university students have and individual’s control exert significantly positive impact on
strong entrepreneurial intentions. Generally speaking, the re- their subjective norm, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entre-
sults reflect strong entrepreneurial intentions of university stu- preneurial attitude. Risk propensity exerts significant positive
dents. impact on student’s subjective norm. The factors like gender,
Analysis of University Student’S Entrepreneurial innovation orientation and achievement orientation have no
Intentions and Their Influencing Factors Using significant impact on student’s entrepreneurial attitude, subjec-
Structural Equation Model tive norm and entrepreneurial self-efficacy. 2) Family back-
ground factors like the entrepreneurship of grandparents, par-
In order to analyze more accurately the impact of individu- ents, relatives and friends have no significant impact on stu-
al/psychological factors, family background factors and social dent’s entrepreneurial attitude, subjective norm and entrepre-
environment factors on university student’s entrepreneurial neurial self-efficacy. They just have indirect connect with stu-
intentions, we utilize structural equation modeling (SEM) to dent’s prior entrepreneurial experience. 3) In social environ-
verify the conceptual model we constructed. In terms of the ment factors, supporting policies, entrepreneurial environment
research and recommendation of Hau, Wen, & Chen (2004), we exert significantly positive impact on entrepreneurial attitude,
select goodness of fit indicators like χ2, GFI, CFI, RMSEA, subjective norm and entrepreneurial self-efficacy of university
NNFI to examine the degree of model fit. During these indica- students. 4) Subjective norm of university students also have
tors, it’s better for Chi-square test not to reach significance. But significantly positive influence on their entrepreneurial attitude
the value of Chi-square is easily influenced by sample size. If and entrepreneurial self-efficacy. 5) Entrepreneurial attitude,
the sample size is large, the value is easy to reach significance. subjective norm and entrepreneurial self-efficacy of university
CFI is a goodness of fit index with many strong points, which students produce significantly positive impact on their entre-
has less impact from sample size. Even though RMSEA is also preneurial intentions while entrepreneurial resistance exerts
influenced by sample size, it is insensitive to the misspecifica- significantly negative impact on their entrepreneurial inten-
tion model with few parameters, so it is also rarely influenced tions.
by sample size, the smaller the value of RMSEA is, the fitter
the model is. The large value of NNFI (TLI) indicates a good fit, Conclusions and Discussions
but this indicator would vary with the change of sample size.
Figure 2 shows the results of the analysis on conceptual Based on a sample survey conducted on 2,010 senior univer-
model shown in Figure 1 by AMOS18.0 (standardized regres- sity students in Xi’an, China in 2009, this paper analyzes the
sion weights). In Figure 2, the path with significance is re- entrepreneurial intentions of university students and their in-
served (p < 0.05). The goodness of fit index of this model is χ2 fluencing factors. The results suggest that university students
= 1189.138 (df = 118, p = 0.001). Since this survey has large have strong entrepreneurial intentions.

98 Copyright © 2012 SciRes.

 Z. X. PENG ET AL.

This paper systematically explores the influence of other MOE(2012), and program of the Specialized Fund for the Basic
factors such as individual/psychological factors, family back- Research Operating expenses Program of Central College in
ground factors and social environment factors on the entrepre- 2011(sk2011004), which is warmly thanked.
neurial intentions of university students. The results indicate
that the subjective norm of university students has significantly
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