Relationship Between Proactive Personality and Entrepreneurial Intentions in College Students: Mediation Effects of Social Capital and Human Capital

Abstract

The research aims to explore the influence mechanism of proactive personality on the entrepreneurial intentions of college students. Adopting proactive personality scale, social capital scale, human capital scale, and entrepreneurial intention scale, this research tested valid samples of 300 Chinese college students. The results revealed that proactive personality exerted a significant and positive impact on the entrepreneurial intentions. Social capital played a partial mediating role between the proactive personality and the entrepreneurial intentions. Human capital also played a partial mediating role between proactive personality and entrepreneurial intentions. Social capital and human capital exerted a chain mediation effect between proactive personality and entrepreneurial intentions. The result of this research offers valuable insights to the study of the influence of college students’ proactive personality on entrepreneurial intentions and provides entrepreneurship education management in colleges with specific practical suggestions so as to improve entrepreneurial intentions among college students.

The influence mechanism of the relationship between entrepreneurial learning and entrepreneurial intention

“…In addition, when examining entrepreneurial intentions among college students, several studies have shown the following results: significant and positive effects of encouragement and support from family members, relatives, and friends ( Davidsson and Honig, 2003 ; Baughn et al, 2006 ); practical entrepreneurship education organization can positively affect the entrepreneurship learning process and increase entrepreneurship alertness and intention ( Kuckertz, 2013 ); Luo et al (2022) revealed that social relations can significantly impact and promote the entrepreneurial intention of college students; practical entrepreneurial learning helps students acquire relevant entrepreneurship experience, which both increases their understanding of the theory–reality gap and ability to identify entrepreneurial opportunities, thereby improving entrepreneurial intention ( Ramsgaard and Østergaard, 2018 ).…”

Impact of social capital on entrepreneurial intention of polytechnic students: The mediating role of innovativeness

“…Furthermore, a stable social environment enhances the possibility that individuals would leave their occupations and pursue entrepreneurship prospects, which is why new entrepreneurs typically start new enterprises in the same location where they have lived for a long time [24][25][26]. Several empirical studies demonstrate a strong relationship between social capital and EI [2,9,25]. Based on the above argument, the study presents the following hypothesis: H1: Social capital will have a significant positive effect on polytechnic students' EI.…”

“…Scholars have been primarily interested in investigating the construct of entrepreneurial intention (EI, hereafter) over the last several decades [5] as it is the most important predictor of new firm formation [5][6][7]. Recently, research has focused on the importance of social capital in entrepreneurship [8,9]. Social capital fosters entrepreneurship by giving individuals resources from family members, friends, the community, and society [8,10].…”

“…Social capital fosters entrepreneurship by giving individuals resources from family members, friends, the community, and society [8,10]. On the other hand, studies have established personality characteristics as major predictors of EI [9,11,12]. When it comes to characterizing the entrepreneur profile, the trait of innovativeness has been prioritized [13].…”

“…When it comes to characterizing the entrepreneur profile, the trait of innovativeness has been prioritized [13]. Although some researchers have looked at the importance of social capital and personality characteristics in developing EI [2,8,14,15] very few empirical studies have looked at how these aspects interact [9,16]. Furthermore, after reviewing the entrepreneurship literature, it is clear that most of the research on EI in India is based on the sample collected from university students or graduate engineering students [14,15,17].…”