Entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention of Chinese college students: Evidence from a moderated multi-mediation model

Entrepreneurship plays an active role in promoting economic and population integration and social mobility. To further promote economic and social development, the Chinese government and universities have launched entrepreneurship education courses and encouraged college students to participate in entrepreneurship competitions to enhance their entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial ability and entrepreneurial intention. However, the entrepreneurial intention of Chinese college students is still not high. Therefore, a question arises: How should entrepreneurial education be carried out? Can entrepreneurial competitions and entrepreneurial self-efficacy be an effective medium in augmenting entrepreneurial education on entrepreneurial intention? Is family income an effective moderator affecting college students’ entrepreneurial intention? To answer these questions, this study used quantitative methods to collect 351 sample data points, and a theoretical model was constructed to explain the mechanism forming entrepreneurial education and entrepreneurial intention. The results show that entrepreneurial self-efficacy plays a partial mediating role between entrepreneurial education and entrepreneurial intention, entrepreneurial competition and entrepreneurial self-efficacy play a chain mediating role and family income positively moderates the relationship between entrepreneurial education and entrepreneurial intention. The contribution of this study is to reveal the black box of the formation mechanism in college students’ entrepreneurial intentions, affirms the role of the Chinese government in promoting entrepreneurial competitions and provides empirical evidence for the effective development of entrepreneurial practise activities, as well as theoretical references for entrepreneurial policy makers.