Xinru XIA, Jiabo LI, Xiaoran WANG, Zhenrong ZHANG*, Yiheng CHEN

1. College of Basic Science, Tianjin Agricultural University, Tianjin 10061, China; 2. College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Hebei University of Science & Technology, Shijiazhuang 050018, China

Abstract After investigating the current situation of college students’ employment and entrepreneurship environment and the existing problems and related policies in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region under the background of the integration of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, this project put forward some insights into the reform of university teaching. First, a questionnaire survey was conducted to understand the basic information of the respondents, the obstacles to starting a business, and the current situation of the entrepreneurial environment such as government assistance. The questionnaires were distributed in the questionnaire star. The data were summarized with Excel; reliability and validity analysis was performed with SPSS, and descriptive statistical analysis was performed with Excel; and then, one-way ANOVA and exploratory factor analysis were performed with SPSS, and confirmatory factor analysis was performed with the SEM structural equation. It was found that gender, educational background and major have a significant impact on choosing to start a business. The evaluation indexes of entrepreneurial environment were divided into two common factors: government policy assistance and government fund assistance, and eight specific influencing factors were obtained, and the model fit well. This paper analyzed the work that schools have to do in the process of college students’ entrepreneurship and its impact on entrepreneurship, providing ideas for the government and schools to help college students start their own businesses in the future.

Key words Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration, Entrepreneurial environment, Factor analysis, SEM structural equation

1 Introduction

The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration is a major national strategy implemented in early 2014. Its purpose is to strengthen the economic cooperation between the Bohai Rim and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, which is of great significance to promoting national economic development[1]. In October 2021, the General Office of the State Council issued theGuidingOpinionsonFurtherSupportingCollegeStudents’InnovationandEntrepreneurship[2], which insists on innovation-driven economic development and leading college students to start businesses by innovation, thereby creating more employment opportunities. To improve college students’ comprehensive quality and enhance the ability of college students to innovate and start a business, the government and schools support college students’ entrepreneurship and employment from multiple perspectives and in an all-round way. Under the influence of favorable policies, this project investigated following issues: college students’ willingness to start businesses in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, obstacles they will face, support for college students’ entrepreneurship from schools, and the government’s support for college students’ entrepreneurship, aiming to provide advice to college students on starting a business.

2 Research status at home and abroad

Employment and entrepreneurship is a social issue of general concern to national governments and the international community. With the process of economic globalization and the slow growth rate of the world’s major economies, the challenges brought by the employment problem are becoming more and more severe. At present, China "adheres to the employment priority strategy and active employment policy to achieve higher quality and fuller employment". In recent years, China has vigorously promoted mass entrepreneurship and innovation, leading the emergence of new market players, and the vigorous development of new industries, new formats and new models has also strongly supported the growth of employment. The scholar who further enriched and developed the theory of entrepreneurship in the late 20thcentury was Peter F. Drucker. The main content of his entrepreneurial theory is to maximize opportunities[3]. Harvard Business School defines entrepreneurship as a process of pursuing opportunities without being limited by existing resources while combining different resources to maximize opportunities, in order to utilize, develop and create value. In the original concept of innovation by management scientist Schumpeter, five situations are described, namely creating new products, adopting new production methods, opening new markets, acquiring or controlling new sources of supply of raw materials or semi-manufactured products, and realizing new industrial organization or corporate restructuring. He believes that innovation is the recombination of existing resources, such as new products, new production processes and methods, new sources of supply, opening up new markets and new organizational methods[4].

3 Data analysis

This survey mainly took the form of a combination of online and offline surveys. Questionnaires were distributed on the questionnaire star, and college students or graduates from colleges and universities in Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Province were selected as the research objects to investigate their entrepreneurial willingness and satisfaction with the entrepreneurial environment in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. A random sampling method was adopted, and a total of 266 questionnaires were selected.

3.1 Reliability analysisThe Cronbach’s Alpha (CA) coefficient was selected for this survey, and the calculation formula was as following:

(1)

Reliability analysis was carried out on 29 items, and the results were as follows:Cronbach’Alpha0.667, and Cronbach’s Alpha based on standardized items 0.733, which was between 0.6 and 0.8, indicating that the reliability of the model was general and within an acceptable range. Therefore, the survey was reliable.

3.2 Validity analysisValidity analysis includes construct validity analysis, content validity analysis,etc.In this survey, construct validity analysis was selected, and it was determined by the significance level ofKMOand Bartlett’s test of sphericity.KMOdetermines whether the model is valid by comparing the magnitude of the partial correlation coefficient between variables and the simple correlation coefficient. Following was the formula:

(2)

If the variables are independent of each other, the correlation coefficient will be 0, and the correlation matrix will be a unit matrix. At this time, the common factor cannot be extracted from the variables, and the factor analysis method is invalid, and the corresponding significance level is >0.05. If the significance level obtained by the SPSS test is smaller than 0.5, there will be a correlation between the variables, the correlation matrix will be not a unit matrix, and the factor analysis method will be valid.

The results of the validity analysis were as follow: Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin 0.816, the approximate chi-square of the Bartlett’s test of sphericity 2 628.437,df406, and significance 0.000. As the significance was 0.000, smaller than 0.05, the factor analysis was valid and had good validity.

3.3 Descriptive statistical analysisThe survey received a total of 266 questionnaires, including 155 males, accounting for 58.27%, and 111 females, accounting for 41.73%. The largest group of students was undergrads, 237, followed by masters (18), junior college students (6), and doctors (5).

126 students were enrolled in science and engineering, followed by 75 students in economics and management, 28 students in humanities, 5 students in medicine, 1 student in art, and 31 in other fields. We investigated entrepreneurs who were planning to start a business in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. There were 124 people who chose to start a business in Beijing, followed by 94 people who chose to start a business in Tianjin, and the least people, 48 people who chose to start a business in Hebei. Because Beijing, as the capital of China, is rich in technologies, human resources, entrepreneurial environment, and entrepreneurial resources, it is more attractive for starting a business. As a municipality directly under the Central Government, Tianjin has obvious advantages in entrepreneurship.

After graduation, college students most hope to continue their studies, in order to improve themselves and obtain a higher platform for future employment. There are still many students who want to take the civil service exam or go to state-owned enterprises. These units are stable and secure, laying the foundation for a stable life in the future. There were more than 20 people who wanted to start a business after graduation immediately, which showed that a few students have a sense of challenge and innovation, and are willing to accept pioneering work.

There were 190 people who would start a business, might start a business or were starting a business, accounting for 71.43% of the surveyed people, indicating that many people are ready to start a business when their jobs are not ideal.

There are various obstacles in the process of starting a business. The obstacles to starting a business are: lack of social resources or connections, lack of funds, lack of work experience, lack of corresponding knowledge and ability, lack of suitable projects, poor entrepreneurial environment, lack of support and protection, personality unsuitable for entrepreneurship, family opposition,etc.Due to the fact that college students have just walked off campus, they know very few people except for their family members, teachers and classmates, so they lack social resources and connections. They have not yet started a job, have no source of income, no work experience, and rarely have entrepreneurial training. Every college student faces these difficulties when they leave school.

It can be seen from Fig.1 that those who are willing to start a business hope that schools provide them with entrepreneurship-related courses and entrepreneurial funds, hold entrepreneurial competitions, provide services and entrepreneurial bases, and create entrepreneurial environments.

Fig.1 Schools’ role in fostering entrepreneurship

3.4 One-way ANOVAIt can be seen from Table 1 that the factors of gender, education background and major all had a significant impact on choosing entrepreneurship.

3.5 Logistic regression modelBecause gender, education background and major all had a significant impact on whether to choose to start a business, a multinomial Logistic regression analysis was performed with gender, education background and major as independent variables.

The fitness table is used to test whether an original hypothesis model can fit original data. In Table 3, the significance value of the correlation coefficient in the fourth column was 0.583, indicating a high probability, so the original hypothesis was established, and the fitting of the model to the original data passed the test. From SPSS analysis, it could be seen that the model’s prediction accuracy rate for "may start a business" was the highest at 92%, and the overall prediction accuracy of the model was 62%. It showed that the logistic model fit well.

Table 1 One-way ANOVA for gender, education background and major with the choice of entrepreneurship

3.6 Exploratory factor analysisWe examined the impact of relevant government support policies on college students’ entrepreneurship, and the satisfaction survey on the entrepreneurial environment from eight aspects was divided into five grades: very satisfied, relatively satisfied, general, not very satisfied, and very dissatisfied. We used SPSS for exploratory factor analysis. From the factor loading table and the Scree plot, we proposed two common factors, which were set as government support policies and government support funds.

It can be seen from Table 2 that the significance level of model fitting was 0.002<0.05, indicating that the statistical significance of the model was significant and the model was effective.

Table 2 Model fitting information

Table 3 Goodness-of-fit test

3.7 Confirmatory factor analysisThe SEM structural equation was used to verify whether it could be attributed to these two factors, and the results are shown in Table 4 below.

Table 4 Extracted common factors

It can be seen from Table 4 that based on the entrepreneurial guarantee mechanism (significancePvalue 0.000***), providing tax incentives (significancePvalue 0.000***), providing professional services for college students by the government (significancePvalue 0.000***), regulating and perfecting relevant legal systems for college students’ entrepreneurship by the government (significancePvalue 0.000***) and promoting entrepreneurship among college students (significancePvalue 0.000***), the level was significance, so the original hypothesis was rejected, and the standard loading coefficients were all greater than 0.4. It could be considered that it had a sufficient variance explanation rate to show that each variable could be displayed on the same factor.

Based on providing various types of entrepreneurial subsidies (significancePvalue 0.000***) and providing entrepreneurial support policies (significancePvalue 0.000***), the level was significance, so the original hypothesis was rejected, and the standard loading coefficients were all greater than 0.4. It could be considered that it had a sufficient variance explanation rate to show that each variable could be displayed on the same factor.

It can be seen from Table 5 that the significancePvalue of 0.000**indicated that the factor of entrepreneurial support funds was positively correlated with entrepreneurial support policies, and the standardized coefficient was 1, so the correlation was significant.

Table 5 Model regression coefficient

According to the fitting indexes in Table 6, except RMSEA, other indexes were all within specified ranges, indicating that the model fit well. Thus, the two common factors extracted by SPSS were verified.

Table 6 Model fitting indexes

4 Conclusions and suggestions

Students are willing to choose to start businesses in economically developed areas, where manpower, technology and resources are concentrated, and there is a high platform. To start a businesses is not the first choice for college students after graduation. They hope to continue their studies or choose stable jobs such as civil servants. Therefore, it is necessary to create conditions to attract college students to start businesses. There will be some obstacles in the process of starting a business. These obstacles are due to the difficulties that everyone faces because students have not yet truly entered the society and they have no resources, no connections and no funds. Gender, educational background and major have an impact on choosing to start a business. Male undergraduate students majoring in physiology and engineering are more willing to start a business.

For schools, what can be done for college students to start a business In the investigation, those who would start a business, those who might start a business and those who were starting a business believed that universities need to set up corresponding entrepreneurial training courses and hire people with entrepreneurial experience to guide students on the matters that need to be paid attention to when starting a business, and they can also create an entrepreneurial environment, hold innovation and entrepreneurship competitions, and provide entrepreneurship services as well as entrepreneurship funds and entrepreneurship bases, so that students have the opportunity to participate in entrepreneurship during school.