The Influence of Entrepreneurship Education on The Entrepreneurial Intention of Students Major in Economic Management in Higher Vocational Colleges

This research examines the impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial attitude and intention among students majoring in economic management in higher vocational colleges. The study reveals that entrepreneurship education has a positive and significant effect on both entrepreneurial attitude and intention. Furthermore, it finds that entrepreneurial attitude serves as a mediating factor in the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention. The research also highlights significant gender differences, indicating that male students exhibit higher average levels of entrepreneurial intention compared to female students. However, there were no discernible gender variations in entrepreneurial tendencies. Those with and without business experience demonstrate distinct disparities in entrepreneurial ambition, with those with business experience exhibiting stronger entrepreneurial intention.


INTRODUCTION
A contemporary economic system is fundamentally built on innovation.The comprehensive integration of innovation and entrepreneurship with economic and social development has contributed to a significant role in upgrading the economic structure, increasing employment, strengthening the lives of individuals, achieving social equity, and promoting economic growth.
In recent years, "mass entrepreneurship and innovation" have received a significant amount of attention.China's economy is currently transitioning from a high-speed growth stage to a highquality development stage, which involves new and more stringent criteria for developing widespread innovation and entrepreneurship (2018).
Enhancing the strength of scientific and technological innovation and industrial development, creating high-quality supply, and expanding successful demand, are all beneficial to further promoting employment and hold great significance in enhancing the existing economic development.Addressing entrepreneurial education and innovation has become necessary given the rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies (Dabbous & Boustani, 2023).
College education is very important for developing students' abilities, which will affect their choice of starting a business (Alakaleek et al., 2023).Colleges and universities have carried out entrepreneurship education, imparting entrepreneurship knowledge and skills to college students, which has an influence on college students' entrepreneurship.Entrepreneurship will be an important channel for colleges and universities to solve the employment problem of graduates in the future (Guo, Li, & Han, 2021).
In accordance with the policy of "mass entrepreneurship and innovation", higher vocational colleges in China have set up theoretical and practical courses related to entrepreneurship.
Taking Shandong Province as an example, it is found that all higher vocational colleges in the province have carried out entrepreneurship education specifically for higher vocational students through investigation.The development of an entrepreneurship major, the availability of entrepreneurship courses, and the administration of student participation in various innovation and entrepreneurship competitions in colleges and universities have been demonstrated to have minimal impact on the success rate of college students' entrepreneurship both within and out of the educational environment, and there remain an array of challenges (Wu , 2022).
In recent years, entrepreneurship has also evolved into the main catalyst for social and economic advancement in many nations throughout the world, drawing significant attention from academics, economists, and politicians (Mirjana et al., 2018).A means to foster entrepreneurship is now entrepreneurship education.
Therefore, more and more people have studied entrepreneurship education, hoping to cultivate young people's entrepreneurial intentions through appropriate entrepreneurship education.
Though the majority of research has determined that entrepreneurship education positively affects entrepreneurial intention (Nguyen & Nguyen, 2023;Nowiński et al., 2019) , there are also opposite research results.According to Nabi et al. 's (2018) research, the effect of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial intention differs and, in certain circumstances, may even cause it to decline.To affect students' entrepreneurial intention, entrepreneurship knowledge alone is insufficient (Ozaralli & Rivenburgh, 2016).The objective of entrepreneurship education is to educate students on skills to establish a business.
Entrepreneurship education should help students understand how to start a business and develop students' various abilities.We should not only teach easy-to-learn management skills (such as finance and marketing), but also encourage students to participate in outdoor activities and practical activities, so as to enhance their creativity, innovation and problem-solving ability.
Colleges and universities should not focus on classroom teaching, but should follow an approach to link classroom teaching with life experience.In addition, teachers should also consider how to improve students' creative thinking when designing courses.
Recently, there has also been a statement about the kind of interaction both of these factors have with one another.Previously, everyone thought it was a direct influence, but now some scholars have suggested that this influence is indirect (Hoang et al., 2020;Ozaralli & Rivenburgh, 2016;Türk et al., 2020).Whether the impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial intention is influenced by students' attitudes toward entrepreneurship.The beneficial impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial intention in higher vocational schools in Zhejiang was previously demonstrated in prior research (Xu, 2018).The importance of an entrepreneurial mindset in this connection can be determined by examining the connection between entrepreneurship education and students' entrepreneurial ambition.The study will add to the foundation of knowledge and offer conclusive evidence of the relationship between these variables.DOI: 10.48165/sajssh.2023.4510 The subsequent five sections comprise this study.A review of the literature on the impact of entrepreneurship education and mindset on entrepreneurial intention is stated in the second section.The data gathering and research methodologies are provided in the third section.The study results are introduced in the fourth section and discussed in the fifth.

LITERATURE REVIEW The Influence of Entrepreneurship Education on Entrepreneurship Intention
Students' intention to execute and devotion to their entrepreneurial goals are significantly positively correlated with entrepreneurship education (Sherkat & Chenari, 2022).Researchers looked at 205 students who took part in the entrepreneurial project and studied the data that was obtained.The results showed that there is a direct and positive correlation between entrepreneurship education and goal intention, goal commitment, and goal execution intention (Sherkat & Chenari, 2022).
According to certain research, there are significant differences in the entrepreneurial intentions of college students of various genders and those with or without experience in family businesses.The ambition to start a business is influenced favorably by entrepreneurial education.The promotion of college students' entrepreneurial intentions depends heavily on entrepreneurship education (Wang et al., 2023).
According to several researchers, entrepreneurship education complements and occasionally alters the association between entrepreneurial attitude, perceived behavior control, and entrepreneurial intention.The association between self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention is influenced by entrepreneurship education.The impact of attitude perceived behavioral control, and self-efficacy on graduate students' entrepreneurial intention can be increased with enhanced entrepreneurship education (Imm Song et al., 2021).
According to studies conducted by Mykolenko et al. (2022), education and teaching strategies positively affect students' entrepreneurial attitudes and perceptions, which in turn harm their entrepreneurial intention.Attending entrepreneurship-related courses, however, has minimal impact on attitude and does nothing to enhance perception or control.Additionally, they emphasized the point that cultural background influences students' entrepreneurial attitudes, which consequently influences their entrepreneurial intention.
Based on previous studies, the following hypothesis is elevated: H1 Entrepreneurial intention is positively influenced by entrepreneurship education.

Entrepreneurship Education's Effect on Entrepreneurial Attitude
Entrepreneurship education has a favorable effect on entrepreneurial mentality, which indicates that it will actively influence students' perspectives or enhance their capacity to capitalize on chances in challenging circumstances (Saadat et al., 2022).
The entrepreneurial inclinations of young people are positively and significantly impacted by their attitude toward starting their own business (Wijayati, Fazlurrahman, Hadi & Arifah 2021).
The entrepreneurial mentality increases with the level of entrepreneurship education (Wijayati et al, 2021).College students' interest in entrepreneurship is likely to be stimulated by obtaining entrepreneurship instruction.They will develop a favorable understanding of entrepreneurship, acquire entrepreneurial abilities, and assess the situation objectively, all of which will improve their potential for entrepreneurship (Li,2022).
Higher entrepreneurial intentions are associated with more optimistic entrepreneurial attitudes.
The two components of entrepreneurial attitude, entrepreneurial cognition, and entrepreneurial significance, reflect the understanding of entrepreneurship among college students as well as their assessment of personal entrepreneurship.The more the college students' interest in entrepreneurship and the higher their entrepreneurial intention, the more positively they see entrepreneurship.The more advanced the college students' self-awareness of entrepreneurship, the greater their entrepreneurial intention.The relationship between entrepreneurial education, entrepreneurial attitude, and entrepreneurial determination is influenced by entrepreneurial attitude (Lu et al., 2021).
Therefore, the following hypothesis is put forward: H2 Entrepreneurship education has a positive influence on entrepreneurial attitude.

The Influence of Entrepreneurial Attitude on Entrepreneurial Intention
Entrepreneurial attitude is a subjective cognition of entrepreneurs in the process for starting a business, which can directly affect the entrepreneurial intention of the individual and may also change the attitude towards entrepreneurship under the influence of other conditions, thus affecting entrepreneurial intention (Wang & Ding, 2023).
Entrepreneurial attitude can reflect a person's cognition, emotion and the intention of being entrepreneurial.The attitude of Entrepreneurial is a kind of subjective cognition, which can change the mentality and behavior of entrepreneurs in entrepreneurial practice.Entrepreneurial attitude has received attention because it is a prerequisite for developing creative thinking, which can awaken the internal creative potential of individuals and is the key factor affecting their entrepreneurial intention (Sulung, Putri & Robbani, 2020).Entrepreneurial attitude is not static, it will be influenced by individual characteristics and other external factors; The attitudes of individuals are more positive towards entrepreneurship, the more likely he will choose to start or implement entrepreneurial behavior in the future, and vice versa.From this point of view, entrepreneurial attitude is an antecedent and moderating variable that can not be ignored.
Therefore, the following hypotheses are put forward: H3 Entrepreneurial attitude has a positive influence on entrepreneurial intention.
H4 Entrepreneurial attitude plays an intermediary role in the influence of The education of entrepreneurship for the intention of entrepreneurship.

METHOD Sample and Data Collection
The survey was conducted in Shandong Institute of Commerce and Technology.Online questionnaire was adopted for the survey, which was distributed to students who major in economic management in Shandong Institute of Commerce and Technology.By stratified sampling, students with student number 15 are selected in each class.A total of 302 questionnaires were collected, and all the questions of the questionnaire were set as mandatory questions, and there were no missing items in the collected questionnaire.The judgment principles of invalid questionnaires mainly include "all the answers are the same", "the answers to the questions about entrepreneurial attitude are completely same" and "the answers to personal information are obviously untrue".There were 285 valid samples after screening, and the effective rate was 94.37%.
This study uses Saadat's entrepreneurship education scale, Lián and Chen's entrepreneurial intention scale, and Li á n and Chen's entrepreneurial intention scale, and the entrepreneurial attitude scale is composed of Li á n and Chen's and Abhijeet Biswas's entrepreneurial attitude scale.It is divided into four parts, the 1st part is basic information about students, the 2nd part is entrepreneurship education, the 3rd part that is the scale of entrepreneurial attitude, and the fourth part is the scale of entrepreneurial intention.The second to fourth parts of the questionnaire will be designed to utilize a five-point Likert Scale.Respondents choose the appropriate option from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree).

Demographic Data
Table 1 shows the gender of the respondents.There are 285 respondents, 35.4% of whom are male (n=101) and 64.6% are female (n=184).

T-test
The significant dissimilarity between male and female students in the education that is entrepreneurship and the intention that is entrepreneurship .The average value of male students' entrepreneurship education is lower than that of female students ', and the average value of female students' entrepreneurial intention is lower than that of male students.There is no significant difference between male and female students in entrepreneurial attitude.

Analysis of Variance
Through the analysis of variance, it demonstrates that there is no significant dissimilarity in entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial attitude and entrepreneurial intention between different grades and different places of birth.

Results of Structural Equation Model
The equation model that is structural is analyzed with the help of AMOS26.The results show that X2/df=3.408,RMSEA=0.092,SRMR=0.0448,GFI=0.767,NFI=0.884,RFI=0.873,IFI=0.915,TLI=0.907.Except for the high value of X2/df and the low GFI, the other indexes are within the critical range, which indicates that the structural model has a good fitting degree and can be used for path analysis.According to the path coefficient analysis, entrepreneurial attitude plays a moderating role.Therefore, institutions must provide entrepreneurial education to students majoring in management and economics.Numerous academics have discovered that entrepreneurship education significantly affects entrepreneurial determination in earlier research (Fayolle & Gailly, 2015;Kim & Park, 2019;Li & Wu, 2019;Saptono et al., 2020).The findings of this study also demonstrate the beneficial effects of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial intention.The forms of entrepreneurial education students demand from their schools are examined in this research.The 285 students who participated in the poll chose entrepreneurial practice, entrepreneurship process, entrepreneurship policy, and 235 entrepreneurship skills.
When creating curricula, schools should consider the requirements of their students and develop their courses accordingly.Students' skills will advance via the integration of theory and practice.According to the lesson design, students can acquire more entrepreneurshiprelated information and guidelines through methodical instruction.Teachers should concentrate on teaching pupils' entrepreneurial abilities that influence entrepreneurship, such as the capacity for taking risks, creative problem-solving, teamwork, and self-control.
An entrepreneurial attitude is significantly influenced by entrepreneurship education.
According to Wu et al. (2008), the primary factor of entrepreneurial intention is entrepreneurial attitude.According to Alejandro ( 2022

CONCLUSION
Through the study of economic management students, it was found that entrepreneurship education has a positive effect on entrepreneurial intention, entrepreneurship education has a positive effect on entrepreneurial attitude, and entrepreneurial attitude plays a mediating role in the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention.It was also found that gender and entrepreneurial experience of family and friends had significant differences on students' entrepreneurial intentions, while grade and birthplace did not have significant differences on entrepreneurial intentions.

LIMITATION
This study has several limitations.Since the survey was done only once with students and was not followed up for three years, we suggest using a longitudinal study to understand the impact of entrepreneurship education on students' willingness to start a business later in life.Another limitation is that we only studied one school and should focus on more schools and a larger sample in the future.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Structural Equation Model ), who examined 10 institutions in Colombia, students' entrepreneurial attitudes are stronger the more training they receive, and the more entrepreneurial culture is valued by them.Students can receive entrepreneurial training via practice education in entrepreneurship education.Students are more interested in learning about entrepreneurial practice in entrepreneurship education, which is consistent with the study's findings.The current emphasis in entrepreneurial education is on improving practical education.

Table 3 :
Number of Entrepreneurship Practice Activities (such as Entrepreneurship Competition, Internship and Part-time Job)

Table 4 :
Grade of Students

Table 5
represents whether the students' relatives and friends have business experience, and 62.8% of the students chose yes (n=179).37.2% of the students chose No (n=106).

Table 5 :
Whether the students' relatives and friends have business experience.

Table 7 :
Validity of Variables

Table 8 :
Linear Regression Analysis of Entrepreneurial Intention Taking education of entrepreneurship for predictive variable and entrepreneurial attitude as a variable that is dependent , the outcome shows R=0.693, R 2 =0.480,F(1,283) =261.590,p<0.01.The entrepreneurship education has a significant impact on entrepreneurial attitude.

Table 9 :
Linear Regression Analysis of Entrepreneurial Attitude

Table 10 :
Linear Regression Analysis of Entrepreneurial Attitude

Table 11 :
Comparison of Entrepreneurship Education, Entrepreneurial Intention, Entrepreneurial  Attitude and between Male and Female Students M(SD)

Table 12 :
Whether students' relatives and friends have business experience has impact on entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial attitude and entrepreneurial intention M(SD)

Table 13 :
Comparison of Entrepreneurship Education, Entrepreneurship Attitude and Entrepreneurship Intention in Different Grades

Table 14 :
Comparison of Entrepreneurship Education, Entrepreneurial Intention, and Entrepreneurial Attitude in Different Birthplaces

Table 15 :
Test Results of Structural Equation Model Test * * * stands for level that is significance P<0.001,** stands for level of significant P<0.01,* stands for level that is significant P<0.05.