Examining the Relationship Between College Students’ Proactive Personality and Entrepreneurial Decision: The Mediating Effects of Entrepreneurial Awareness-Motivation-Capability

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between proactive personality, entrepreneurial awareness-motivation-capability, and college students’ entrepreneurial decisions in the Chinese context. Based on sample data from 1,677 Chinese college students, this study shows that proactive personality positively impacts college students’ entrepreneurial decisions, awareness, motivation, and capability (i.e., opportunity identification and exploitation capabilities). Entrepreneurship awareness and entrepreneurial capability mediate the relationship between proactive personality and college students’ entrepreneurial decisions, while entrepreneurial motivation has a concealment effect. Moreover, the mediating effect of opportunity identification capability is greater than that of entrepreneurship awareness and opportunity exploitation capabilities. By examining how proactive personality affects entrepreneurial decision through entrepreneurial awareness-motivation-capability, this study contributes to the understanding of the relationship between proactive personality and college students’ entrepreneurial behaviors.

Plain Language Summary

Examining the Relationship between Proactive Personalities in College Students and Entrepreneurial Decisions

This study, based on data from 1,677 college students, investigates how proactive personality influences entrepreneurial decisions through entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and capability. The results show that proactive personality positively affects entrepreneurial decisions, awareness, motivation, and capabilities. Entrepreneurial awareness and capability serve as mediators and motivation having a concealment effect. Notably, opportunity identification capability has a stronger mediating effect than awareness and opportunity exploitation capability.

Keywords

proactive personality entrepreneurial awareness entrepreneurial motivation entrepreneurial capability entrepreneurial decision college students

Introduction

As the number of graduates increases and the economy enters a new normal, entrepreneurship is a feasible employment option for college students that can help them better cope with the challenging employment situation. Promoting and encouraging college students to start their own businesses is quite important, as it not only fosters personal development, but also injects vitality and innovation into social and economic growth. This is because young students are full of imagination and creativity and can act as a driving force for innovation and entrepreneurship. With the continuous promotion of “mass entrepreneurship and innovation” in China, the entrepreneurial activities of college students are also on the rise. The General Office of the State Council issued Guiding Opinions on Further Supporting College Students’ Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which provides education, capital, services, and policy support for encouraging and supporting college students’ innovation and entrepreneurship. Since 2015, more than 18 million projects and 70 million students have participated in China international college students’ innovation competition, and more than 200 gold award-winning projects have secured venture capital investment, with a cumulative financing amount exceeding 10 billion yuan, 30% of these award-winning projects have successfully achieved industrial application. Therefore, these policy support motivates college students to start new businesses, and college students are increasingly becoming new forces of innovation and entrepreneurship in China.

Colleges and universities also continually implement innovation and entrepreneurship education for college students, enriching their practical education through discipline competitions and entrepreneurship and innovation lectures. These programs integrate innovation and entrepreneurship education with professional education, further cultivating college students’ entrepreneurial awareness. Extant studies have suggested that national and university factors have a positive impact on college students’ entrepreneurship (Huang et al., 2024; Lv et al., 2021; Meng, et al. 2023; Zhou & Xu, 2012).

However, according to the 2023 China Undergraduate Employment Report, while the number of college graduates in China exceeded 10 million for the first time in 2022, only 4.25% of them chose to start their own businesses. Chinese college students are extremely enthusiastic and passionate about entrepreneurship, but a large proportion of entrepreneurship is survival-based (Guo 2010), which is largely related to college students’ personality traits (Batool et al., 2023; Kerr et al., 2018). Although a large number of entrepreneurial policies were issued to support college students’ entrepreneurship, structural contradictions in the implementation of policies (e.g., long policy implementation cycle) and social systemic resistance (e.g., family resistance) still exist, and most college students also exhibit some inherent weaknesses, such as passivity, fear of failure, and stress aversion (Singh Sandhu et al., 2011). Because of the entrepreneurial environment and their own personalities, college students rarely select entrepreneurship as their ideal career choice. Therefore, entrepreneurship becomes a passive choice in the face of employment pressures and may be regarded as an alternative to fill the gap between their ideal and actual jobs. Consequently, entrepreneurship is viewed as an adaptation to the job market rather than evidence of a specific interest in or enthusiasm for entrepreneurship.

Therefore, college students who actively implement career plans and rationally consider the issues related to entrepreneurship may become strongly motivated to engage in entrepreneurship rather than blindly follow a trend. Proactive college students can set rational entrepreneurial goals and more actively seek available resources to promote their entrepreneurial behavior, putting their entrepreneurial ideas into practice. At the same time, college students with proactive personalities have more active and innovative ways of thinking and behaving, as well as the courage to try new methods and ideas. Thus, they are more likely to discover and seize entrepreneurial opportunities and make decisive entrepreneurial choices. In addition, proactive individuals have stronger entrepreneurial desires and motivation than do non-proactive individuals (Delle & Amadu, 2016). Individuals who are more proactive are likely to exhibit greater interest in entrepreneurship and then make entrepreneurial decisions (Neneh, 2019), such as actively starting a business (Brandstätter, 2011). College students with highly proactive personalities do not limit themselves to studying their major, instead choosing to learn about a wide range of fields. Therefore, acquiring relevant entrepreneurial knowledge is easier for college students with high initiative (Manolopoulos et al., 2024).

Extant research on the relationship between proactive personality and college students’ entrepreneurship has found that proactive personality positively affects creativity (Du et al., 2021; A. Zhang et al., 2021), entrepreneurial intention (Aryaningtyas & Risyanti 2023; H. X. Chen, 2024; Luo et al., 2022; Prabhu et al., 2012), and entrepreneurial behaviors (Neneh, 2019; Wang et al., 2020). Nevertheless, little scientific understanding exists regarding how proactive personality affects college students’ entrepreneurship. Furthermore, existing studies have focused on the individual effects of entrepreneurial awareness (Brownson, 2015; Fretschner & Weber 2013; Netshilinganedza et al., 2022), motivation (Carsrud & Brannback, 2011; Stephan et al., 2015), and ability (Jayeoba, 2015; Ogbari, 2023; Svotwa et al., 2022) rather than on college students’ entrepreneurial decisions. However, existing research lacks a unified theoretical framework that is capable of integrating entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and ability. In addition, further investigation is needed to provide greater insights into how proactive personality affects college students’ entrepreneurial behaviors.

Therefore, extant research focusing on the individual effects of entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and capability could not fully provide a comprehensive understanding of entrepreneurial behaviors. Due to awareness, motivation, and capability as drivers of entrepreneurial behaviors, by integrating entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and capability, we could synthesize previous research to establish a more unified theoretical framework, which provides us a more comprehensive understanding of how proactive personality affects college students’ entrepreneurial behaviors.

To address this shortcoming, this study introduces an awareness-motivation-ability framework in the field of competitive dynamics research, which has been widely used to analyze inter-organizational competition (M. J. Chen & Miller, 2012, 2015; Ketchen et al., 2004; Smith et al., 2005) and subsequently extended to other research fields (e.g., strategy, innovation, and knowledge management research) (Bloodgood & Chen 2022; Shu et al., 2020; Stadtler & Lin, 2017). Although this framework was used to explain the firms’ competitive behavior, showing three essential factors (i.e., awareness, motivation and capability) that underlie organizational action (Chen, 1996), the choices of the firms’ competitive actions reflect the managers’ decisions, which are always related to managers’ background characteristics, psychological attributes, and cognitive patterns (Hambrick, 2007; Hambrick & Mason, 1984). Therefore, the awareness-motivation-capability framework can be extended to individual entrepreneurship. By integrating entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and capability, this study develops a theoretical framework that reveals the inherent mechanism through which proactive personality affects college students’ entrepreneurship.

Based on the data from a sample of 1,677 Chinese college students, this study found that proactive personality positively affects entrepreneurial decisions. We showed that proactive personality positively affects college students’ entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and ability. In addition, the study showed that college students’ entrepreneurial awareness, motivation and abilities form the path through which proactive personality affects entrepreneurial decisions. However, entrepreneurial awareness and ability mediate the relationship between proactive personality and entrepreneurial decisions, while entrepreneurial motivation has a suppressing effect. This study extends the awareness-motivation-capability framework to research on college students’ entrepreneurship. These findings promote understanding of the relationship between proactive personality and college students' entrepreneurship and provide valuable practical implications for improving college students’ entrepreneurial behaviors.

Theoretical Background and Hypothesis

Proactive Personality

Proactive personality is defined as a stable tendency where individuals are relatively unconstrained by situational forces, and who effects environmental change (Bateman & Crant, 1993: 105). Therefore, individuals with proactive personality are enabled to actively alter their environment rather than passively adapt to it. Proactive personality has received extensive attention in entrepreneurship research (Din et al., 2023) and is believed to have significant impacts on entrepreneurial intentions and behaviors (Bazkiaei et al., 2020; H. X. Chen, 2024; Nawaz et al., 2024; Neupane et al., 2025). Existing research indicates that individuals with proactive personality are more inclined to identify opportunities, take risks, and act, making them more likely to develop entrepreneurial intentions (Luo et al., 2022; Naz et al., 2020). In addition, proactive personality can enhance entrepreneurial self-efficacy (Hu & Li, 2025), shape a positive entrepreneurial attitude (H. X. Chen, 2024). Furthermore, although proactive personality also enables individuals to cultivate entrepreneurial awareness (Brownson, 2015; Fretschner & Weber 2013; Netshilinganedza et al. 2022), stimulate entrepreneurial motivation (Carsrud & Brannback, 2011; Stephan et al., 2015), and improve entrepreneurial capabilities (Jayeoba, 2015; Ogbari, 2023; Svotwa et al., 2022), these studies did not provide a more integrated understanding of how proactive personality affects individual entrepreneurial decision through awareness-motivation-capability. Additionally, proactive personality does not always bring positive effects; some studies have showed potential negative impacts (Stephan et al., 2024). Proactive entrepreneurs may reduce employee satisfaction due to an overly dominant management style or overlook risks in strategic decisions due to overconfidence (Manolopoulos et al., 2024).

Entrepreneurial Awareness-Motivation-Capability

Awareness, motivation, and capability are essential drivers of behavior. In competition dynamic research, awareness, motivation, and capability drive the firms’ competitive behaviors. However, managers make the decisions within firms to take action to respond to inter-firm rival (Chen, 1996), which is always related to their attributes and characteristics (e.g., personality). In the entrepreneurship research, individuals’ entrepreneurial decisions are also enabled by their Awareness, motivation, and capability. Entrepreneurial awareness, which is a prerequisite to entrepreneurial behaviors, refers to the extent to which college students recognize the importance and meaningfulness of entrepreneurial opportunities. Entrepreneurial motivation is defined as college students’ incentive to take entrepreneurial action related to perceived gains and losses. Entrepreneurial capability refers to the capability to identify and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities (Tang & Jiang, 2008). However, extant research has singly examined the effects of entrepreneurial awareness (Brownson, 2015; Fretschner & Weber 2013; Netshilinganedza et al., 2022), entrepreneurial motivation (Carsrud & Brannback, 2011; Stephan et al., 2015), and entrepreneurial capability (Jayeoba 2015; Ogbari, 2023; Svotwa et al., 2022) on entrepreneurship. Therefore, we still lack a more integrated framework to understand the combined effects of entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and capability.

Previous research has examined the effects of various factors on college students’ entrepreneurial awareness (Rivero & Ubierna, 2021), such as academic performance (Hua, 2025), specialized courses (Yang, 2024), business and practical experience (Ardi et al., 2025; Liang et al., 2023), and family background (Widyastuti et al., 2023). Furthermore, extant research has focused on the effects of personality on entrepreneurial awareness (Respati et al., 2023). However, some studies showed that course interventions could increase entrepreneurial awareness more than college students’ characteristics (Somjai et al., 2019). Therefore, it is necessary to further examine the relationship between personality and entrepreneurial awareness.

Entrepreneurial motivation, as one driving force toward entrepreneurial behavior, is influenced by styles of thinking (Mitan et al., 2024), entrepreneurial education (Shetty et al., 2024; Farhangmehr et al., 2016), technological environments (Udekwe & Iwu, 2024), institutional environments (Omri et al., 2024), cultural values (Sefiani & Davies, 2025), etc. Furthermore, extant research has examined the effect of entrepreneurial motivation on entrepreneurial performance (Han et al., 2025; Suresh et al., 2025), entrepreneurial intention (Saoula et al., 2023), etc. Furthermore, extant research has focused on the effects of personality on entrepreneurial motivation (Murnieks et al., 2020), showing significant relations with entrepreneurial attitudes (i.e., motivation) (Howard & Boudreaux, 2024). However, few studies have examined the role of entrepreneurial motivation in the relationship between personality and entrepreneurial decisions (Ghasemijalal et al., 2024).

Extant research has provided various definitions of entrepreneurial capability. For instance, Man et al. (2002) defined entrepreneurial capability as the high-level human capital possessed by entrepreneurs themselves, such as professional knowledge, skills, etc. Dess et al. (2003) suggested that entrepreneurial capability refers to the ability of individual entrepreneurs or startups to identify and exploit opportunities. Similarly, Karra et al. (2008: 443) defined entrepreneurial capability as the ability to identify and acquire the necessary resources to act upon identified opportunities in the market, or to create new market opportunities. Extant studies have showed that different personality traits have differential effects on entrepreneurial capability (Branca et al., 2025; Salameh et al., 2022), mostly focusing on the effects of the big five personality (Bajwa et al., 2017; Yang & Ai, 2019). However, how proactive personality affects entrepreneurial decision through entrepreneurial capability is still not yet fully understood.

Proactive Personality and College Students’ Entrepreneurial Decisions

Proactive personality is defined as an individual’s stable tendency to influence their external environment by taking action and exploring new paths that are independent of contextual constraints (Bateman & Crant, 1993). Entrepreneurial decision refers to the decision-making of potential entrepreneurs preparing to create their own businesses and becoming entrepreneurs (Forlani & Mullins, 2000). This definition also reflects the choices made by individuals who have identified and recognized entrepreneurial opportunities regarding whether to take advantage of them (Shane, 2003). This study argues that proactive personality can empower college students to make entrepreneurial decisions, which are decisions to create and manage one’s own business (C. C. Chen et al., 1998). College students with proactive personality make proactive choices, are adventurous explorers, have high self-efficacy, and an optimistic outlook for the future. Therefore, a proactive personality can allow college students to actively face and respond to high-risk environments and uncertainty, dare to challenge traditions, seek new opportunities, and develop strong abilities to adapt and solve problems. Thus, they can more easily adapt to careers (Jiang, 2017) and be satisfied with their decisions (Siebert et al., 2020). Individuals with proactive personality are always creative (T. Y. Kim et al., 2010; Pan et al., 2018), which further fosters entrepreneurship and its success (M. H. Chen et al., 2015; Laguía et al., 2019; Phan et al., 2010).

Individuals with proactive personality are eager to learn new things and enjoy new experiences; moreover, they are good at identifying and seizing opportunities to transform entrepreneurial intentions into actual entrepreneurial decisions. At the same time, people with proactive personalities are more willing to accept risk and responsibility and can better cope with the challenges and difficulties they face before they undertake entrepreneurship. Proactive personality also allows an individual to actively seek change and innovation, thereby prompting them to more decisively make clear career choices (Zhu et al., 2021). This can significantly reduce hesitation and distress in the entrepreneurship decision-making process. Therefore, individuals whose personalities are more proactive are more likely to make entrepreneurial decisions. Recent studies have supported this view. For example, Yan (2010) suggested that proactive personality can predict entrepreneurial behavior and help new ventures make the right entrepreneurial decisions. Biswas and Verma (2021) found that college students with proactive personality are more likely to make entrepreneurial decisions, while Delle et al. (2016) showed that proactive personality has positive direct and indirect effects on entrepreneurial decision-making. Accordingly, we propose the following hypothesis:

H1: Proactive personality positively affects college students’ entrepreneurial decisions.

Proactive Personality and College Students’ Entrepreneurial Awareness

This study argues that entrepreneurial awareness is a powerful and inherent driving force that empowers college students’ engagement in entrepreneurial activities. To form entrepreneurial awareness, college students must strengthen their psychological qualities, capabilities, and values and explore entrepreneurial information (such as entrepreneurial platforms and value, and social resources). Individuals with proactive personality can spontaneously understand how important and useful entrepreneurship is to themselves and society, without requiring any guidance from the outside world. In other words, a proactive personality allows college students to perceive the value of entrepreneurship.

Proactive personality also enhances college students’ attitude judgments, preparation behaviors, and value orientation through their perception of internal and external entrepreneurial information and opportunities, which indirectly impacts entrepreneurial awareness. Proactive personality facilitates college students’ desire for self-exploration, self-learning, and information seeking, which inspires intentions to start a business. Crant (1996) found a significantly positive correlation between proactive personality and an individual’s intention to own their own company. Furthermore, having proactive personality allows individuals to demonstrate entrepreneurial initiative, self-reliance, and an orientation toward the future, which can inspire them to develop strong entrepreneurial awareness (Greguras & Diefendorff, 2010; Siebert & Kunz, 2016). As the driver of their entrepreneurial activities, a proactive personality enhances college students’ entrepreneurial awareness (Luo et al., 2022). Delle and Amadu (2016) showed that a proactive personality positively affects entrepreneurial awareness. Accordingly, the second hypothesis is proposed as follows:

H2: Proactive personality positively affects college students’ entrepreneurial awareness.

Proactive Personality and College Students’ Entrepreneurial Motivation

Proactive personality has a significantly positive impact on specific motivation (Turner, 2003), reflecting college students’ incentive to take entrepreneurial action related to perceived gains and losses. Shane et al. (2003) suggest that entrepreneurial motivation influences individuals’ initiative to identify opportunities, acquire resources, and implement other entrepreneurial behaviors. Therefore, we argue that proactive personality positively affects college students’ entrepreneurial motivation. Having proactive personality allows them to accurately evaluate entrepreneurial benefits and risks or costs (e.g., capital risk, lack of social resources, lack of core competitiveness). Entrepreneurial benefits that exceed the risks and costs of entrepreneurship especially generate entrepreneurial motivation in college students, further promoting entrepreneurial decision-making. College students like to challenge themselves, improve their personal social influence, and realize their own economic independence, which catalyzes the generation of entrepreneurial motivation.

At the same time, proactive personality allows college students to achieve their own life goals, and entrepreneurship is regarded as a way to realize their self-worth. Facing and discovering entrepreneurial opportunities make it easier to generate entrepreneurial motivation. Chan et al. (2015) found that a proactive personality positively affects entrepreneurial motivation, while De Clercq and Pereira (2023) showed that having a proactive personality better motivates creative entrepreneurship. Accordingly, hypothesis three is proposed:

H3: Proactive personality positively affects college students’ entrepreneurial motivation.

Proactive Personality and College Students’ Entrepreneurial Capability

Entrepreneurial capability reflects college students’ capability to identify and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities (Tang & Jiang, 2008). This ability can be continuously strengthened (Chandler & Hanks, 1993) to include opportunity identification and exploitation capabilities. Opportunity identification capability is the ability to identify entrepreneurial opportunities in the external environment. Opportunity exploitation capability reflects the ability to utilize entrepreneurial opportunities through access to and leveraging capital, expertise, and mentorship, etc.

Proactive personality is more likely to help college students innovate through continuous learning and stimulate individual creativity, which further allows them to innovatively analyze market dynamics, find unsatisfied needs, and evaluate the value of new potential business opportunities. Therefore, proactive personality affects the richness of college students’ entrepreneurial knowledge, as well as their entrepreneurial ability. At the same time, proactive personality facilitates developing creativity and the ability to think innovatively. These skills help college students generate new ideas to solve problems, actively find new means and methods, break fixed thinking styles, and constantly challenge their own limits. Proactive personality can effectively enhance career adaptability (Tolentino et al., 2014) and career decision-making self-efficacy (H. S. Kim & Park, 2017). Maziriri et al. (2023) showed that proactive personality facilitates an individual’s entrepreneurial and innovation abilities. Delle et al. (2022) found that a proactive personality enhances the abilities to avoid risk and cope with the challenges in an entrepreneurial environment. This leads to the speculation that proactive personality impacts entrepreneurial ability by affecting entrepreneurial knowledge. Accordingly, hypothesis four is proposed:

H4: Proactive personality positively affects college students’ (a) opportunity identification and (b) opportunity exploitation capabilities.

Entrepreneurial Awareness and College Students’ Entrepreneurial Decisions

This study argues that active and clear entrepreneurial awareness can facilitate the development of individual entrepreneurial decisions. Due to wide publicity in China related to innovation and entrepreneurship, college students are more likely to perceive and recognize the importance and value that entrepreneurship offers them and society. This recognition can improve their entrepreneurial awareness, further actively driving entrepreneurial behavior. According to an entrepreneurial awareness survey of college students, more than 54% have entrepreneurial intentions (Raborar, 2022). When college students subconsciously perceive the importance of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial awareness will generate a strong innate driving force that encourages them to make entrepreneurial decisions (Wu & Li, 2011), and finally start businesses. At the same time, the State and society provide various types of support for college students’ entrepreneurship through the superstructure, further facilitating their entrepreneurial awareness. Entrepreneurial awareness also motivates college students to actively participate in innovation and entrepreneurship practices, thus accumulating entrepreneurial experience and knowledge, which can reinforce their entrepreneurial tendencies and decisions. Shamsudeen et al. (2017) showed that entrepreneurial awareness is a core component of the entrepreneurial process and allows individuals to make better use of existing opportunities to reach successful entrepreneurial decisions. Shane and Venkataraman (2000) found that the perceived social value of entrepreneurial awareness positively impacts entrepreneurs’ decisions. Accordingly, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H5: Entrepreneurial Awareness Positively Affects College Students’ Entrepreneurial Decisions.

Entrepreneurial Motivation and College Students’ Entrepreneurial Decisions

Entrepreneurial motivation is a driver of entrepreneurial behaviors and is always related to entrepreneurship’s benefits and costs. Individuals can pursue and achieve specific goals through their entrepreneurial activities. However, entrepreneurship is inevitably accompanied by certain risks and costs, which are the result of the uncertainties related to entrepreneurial activities. College students can obtain unlimited entrepreneurial benefits (e.g., vast wealth, an outstanding personal reputation) by systematically investigating and evaluating information like the market competition, their own experience and capabilities, financial support, market size, and consumer demand. Especially, when entrepreneurship benefits are greater than its associated risks or costs, college students will be strongly motivated to start businesses. Heydari et al. (2013) showed that college students’ motivation for achievement increased the probability that they would start a business. Mehrabi and Kolabi (2012) found motivational characteristics positively impacted the quality of entrepreneurial strategic decisions. These assertions are consistent with the research on Chinese risk-taking behaviors, which suggested that Chinese people tend to have a high propensity to take risk (Lam, 2015).

However, according to subjective expected utility theory (Savage, 1954), when facing several choices (e.g., entrepreneurship, employment, entering a higher school), college students usually follow the principle of maximizing subjective utility. Entrepreneurship is risky and costly, which may make college students face a strategic decision under uncertainty, thus leading them to have private preferences (e.g., employment, entering a higher school) over entrepreneurship, further becoming risk-averse. A tendency toward risk-taking, one of the antecedents of entrepreneurial decisions, may directly affect entrepreneurial motivation and attitude, further influencing entrepreneurial decisions (Douglas & Shephard, 2000; Keh et al., 2002; Krueger, 1993; Simon et al., 2000). College students who encounter entrepreneurial failure are likely to encounter deep suffering. Kollmann et al. (2017) showed that fear of failure motivates more negative opportunity evaluation. According to J. Li’s (2012) survey, 41.9% of the respondents engaging in survival-oriented entrepreneurship are college students, leading to ambiguity risk aversion (Liu et al., 2018). Although previous research has showed that Chinese people are more willing to take risks, college students as a special group may be risk-averse, this because most of Chinese college students have less related experience, and lack resources support, which makes them difficult to accurately trade-off the benefits and risks of entrepreneurship, thereby leading students not to start new businesses. However, innovation and entrepreneurship continue to rise in China, and college students’ choices may be reversed under different risk preference. According to prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979), although the entrepreneurial benefits are less than the associated loss, college students tend to pursue risks, further making entrepreneurial decisions. Accordingly, this leads to the following hypothesis:

H6: Entrepreneurial motivation positively affects college students’ entrepreneurial decisions.

Entrepreneurial Capability and College Students’ Entrepreneurial Decisions

The core of entrepreneurship is identifying and pursuing opportunities (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). Entrepreneurial capability includes the capabilities to identify and exploit opportunities (Wilson & Martin, 2015), and enhances entrepreneurial decision effectiveness (Sassetti et al., 2022). College students who can find and take advantage of entrepreneurial opportunities and improve their entrepreneurial capabilities further enhance their entrepreneurial decisions and chance to achieve entrepreneurial success. When college students have higher levels of entrepreneurial capability, they can objectively evaluate the potential of entrepreneurship and recognize their obvious entrepreneurial advantages. The ability to identify opportunities involves recognizing unexplored possibilities by actively understanding and studying target industries and market trends, mastering current and future demand changes, understanding the competitive landscape, and applying emerging technologies. By using their ability to exploit opportunities, college students can identify the commercial profit potential that lies between the benefits of entrepreneurial opportunities and the costs needed to identify and exploit them and then more rationally allocate resources and implement entrepreneurial decisions. Having entrepreneurial ability may imply that college students possess both innovation and practical capabilities (Man et al., 2002). Innovation capability makes it easier for college students to find and create entrepreneurial opportunities, while practical capability allows them to make more effective use of entrepreneurial opportunities. For instance, entrepreneurship practice competitions can help college students improve their entrepreneurial sensitivity and alertness, while promoting their entrepreneurial willingness and decisions. Yi et al. (2020) showed that entrepreneurial ability has a positive effect on entrepreneurial decisions, and college students are more likely to make entrepreneurial decisions when they have high entrepreneurial expectations and ability. Bayon et al. (2015) also suggested that entrepreneurial ability (i.e., perceived entrepreneurial capability) positively impacts entrepreneurial decision-making. Accordingly, the seventh hypothesis is proposed:

H7: Opportunity identification (a) and exploitation (b) capabilities positively impact college students’ entrepreneurial decisions.

The Mediating Effect of Entrepreneurial Awareness-Motivation-Ability

Based on the previous arguments, entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and capability mediate the relationship between proactive personality and entrepreneurial decisions. College students with proactive personality will actively understand the entrepreneurial environment and compensate for the lack of entrepreneurial resources. They will actively participate in entrepreneurship training and education activities organized by colleges and universities, further improving their entrepreneurial cognition and awareness-motivation-ability. Proactive personality can help college students clarify their own levels of entrepreneurial needs and quickly and suitably adjust their entrepreneurial decisions. At the same time, engaging in continuous learning to improve their entrepreneurial capabilities can lead college students to propose innovative ideas for implementing entrepreneurial activities. Therefore, improving entrepreneurial awareness-motivation-capability can alleviate the cognitive dissonance of entrepreneurial intentions and behaviors, further stimulating entrepreneurial willingness and choices. Recent studies have presented empirical evidence of the mediating effects of entrepreneurial awareness-motivation-capability (Meng et al., 2023; Wang et al., 2020; Wei and Hisrich, 2016). Therefore, proactive personality can impact entrepreneurial decisions through entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and capability. Accordingly, the final hypothesis is proposed:

H8: Entrepreneurial awareness (a), motivation (b), identification (c), and exploitation (d) capabilities mediate the relationship between a proactive personality and college students’ entrepreneurial decisions.

Based on the above hypothesis, our research model is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

The theoretical framework.

Research Design

Sample

The study’s main data are collected from surveys of Chinese university students selected through random sampling. The survey was conducted from January to April 2024. The respondents are from the universities in Jiangsu province, which has a very developed economy and a favorable entrepreneurial atmosphere. The students completed the questionnaires on-site and returned them promptly. Atotal of 2,000 questionnaires were randomly distributed and 1,724 were returned. 47 invalid questionnaires were excluded, such as incomplete questionnaires (e.g., some items of the key variables were missing) or those that were arbitrarily filled in (e.g., all items were given the same value). We also set a screening item to confirm whether they are college students. If not, the questionnaire will be removed. Additionally, we set up reverse items as one of the criteria for eliminating questionnaires. For example, a sample item “I don’t like to oppose others’ viewpoints and defend my own ideas”. Finally, 1,677 valid questionnaires were obtained (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Sample Description.

Variables	No.	Percent
Gender
Male	1,038	61.9
Female	639	38.1
Grade
First	202	12.0
Second	449	26.8
Third	596	35.5
Fourth	430	25.6
Discipline
Philosophy	32	1.9
Economics	169	10.1
Law	76	4.5
Education	96	5.7
Literature	159	9.5
History	16	1.0
Science	172	10.3
Engineering	515	30.7
Agriculture science	31	1.8
Medicine	38	2.3
Military science	9	0.5
Management	313	18.7
Art	51	3.0
Registered residence
Country	997	59.5
Urban	680	40.5
Party membership
Non-CPC party member	1,491	88.9
CPC party member	186	11.1
Types of university
985/211	188	11.2
Non-985/211	1,489	88.8

Variable Measurement

Mature scales that have been widely adopted were used to obtain all variable measurements. Considering the Chinese context and college students’ characteristics, some items were deleted or modified to better reflect the traits of Chinese college students. In addition, we translated the English scale into Chinese. Subsequently, the Chinese version was back-translated independently into English. We compared the back-translated scale with the original one to confirm consistency and accuracy. Furthermore, we invited five college students to help us improve the expressions of the questionnaire items to ensure that the potential respondents could understand them easily. All scales were based on a five-point Likert scale, where 1 represents strongly disagree, and 5 represents strongly agree.

Entrepreneurial Decisions (ED)

Following previous research (C. C. Chen et al., 1998), five items were used to measure college students’ entrepreneurial decisions, which are included to evaluate their decisions to start a new business. For example, a sample item was, “I am interested in entrepreneurship.” The Cronbach’s alpha for this variable was .864.

Proactive Personality (PP)

Following previous research (Bateman & Crant, 1993), seven items were used to measure proactive personalities among college students. These items asked students to assess the extent to which they purposefully change their current environment. A sample item was “I’ve been looking for new ways to improve my life.” The Cronbach’s alpha for this variable was .836.

Entrepreneurial Awareness (EA)

Following previous research (Tomy & Pardede, 2020; Van Ewijk & Al-Aomar, 2016), four items were used to measure college students’ entrepreneurial awareness. The students were asked to evaluate their views on the importance and usefulness of entrepreneurship. A sample item was “Entrepreneurship is useful to me.” The Cronbach’s alpha for this variable was .846.

Entrepreneurial Motivation (EM)

Entrepreneurial motivation explains why college students want to start businesses, which is reflected in the benefits of entrepreneurship. Following previous research (A. Li & Zeng, 2018), seven items were used to measure college students’ entrepreneurial motivation. A sample item was “Capital and wealth can be accumulated through entrepreneurship.” The Cronbach’s alpha for this variable was .869.

Entrepreneurial Capability (EA)

Entrepreneurial capability refers to college students’ ability to identify and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. In this study, entrepreneurial ability is separated into opportunity identification (OIC) and exploitation (OEC) capabilities. Following previous research (Chandler & Hanks, 1993; Tang & Jiang, 2008), four items were used to measure college students’ opportunity identification capabilities. A sample was, “I can see unsatisfied market needs in the current market.” The Cronbach’s alpha for this variable was .835. Following previous studies (Tang & Jiang, 2008), five items were adopted to measure opportunity exploitation capability. A sample item was, “I often access business information through various media.” The Cronbach’s alpha for this variable is .890.

Control Variables

This study controls for variables that affect college students’ entrepreneurship. Gender: This study assigned the boys to 1, 0 otherwise. Practical activities (PA): College students could some useful experience and skills by taking part in various practical activities (e.g., discipline competition, academic activities, social survey, etc.). This study codes PA as a binary variable, 1 being participating in any of PA, 0 otherwise. Discipline: Previous research distinguished the soft (e.g., management) and hard (e.g., electronic engineering) disciplinary fields (Nelson Laird et al., 2008). Students in different disciplines have different ways of thinking and doing things. Therefore, this study assigns students from science and engineering disciplines (i.e., hard disciplinary fields) 1 and others 0. Personal entrepreneurial experience (PEE): Students with entrepreneurial experience may be likely to start a business. Therefore, this study controlled for PEE of college students, assigning students with entrepreneurial experience 1 and others 0. Family entrepreneurial experience (FEE): Family with entrepreneurial experience provides college students with a favorable entrepreneurial atmosphere, thereby stimulating students to start businesses. Therefore, this study assigned students with family entrepreneurial experience 1 and others 0. Entrepreneurial education (EE): Entrepreneurial education in colleges and universities is also very crucial. Previous research has showed the positive effect of EE on college students’ entrepreneurship (Do Nguyen & Nguyen, 2023). Therefore, referring to the literature (A. Li & Zeng, 2018), we used four items to measure EE (Cronbach’s alpha = .813). one sample item is “I learned systematic entrepreneurial knowledge at school”.

Reliability and Validity

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed using AMOS 21.0; the results are reported in Table 2. The factor loadings of all variable items are greater than 0.5 except one proactive personality item with a factor loading of less than 0.5 (0.494). The average variance extracted (AVE) of all other variables is greater than 0.5, except PP and EM, whose AVEs are less than 0.5 (0.443 and 0.474, respectively), greater than their squared correlations with other constructs in the model (Henseler et al., 2015). However, the composite reliability (CR) values of all variables are greater than 0.8, including 0.845 for PP, 0.863 for EM. Therefore, we consider the AVE value to be at an acceptable level as the CR was above 0.6 (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). In addition, the Cronbach’s alphas of all variables are greater than 0.8, indicating good reliability.

Table 2.

The Results of CFA.

Items	Factor loadings	CR	AVE	Cronbach alpha
PP1	0.792	0.845	0.443	.836
PP2	0.724
PP3	0.674
PP4	0.494
PP5	0.626
PP6	0.685
PP7	0.625
EA1	0.537	0.828	0.556	.846
EA2	0.628
EA3	0.895
EA4	0.861
EM1	0.608	0.863	0.474	.869
EM2	0.684
EM3	0.716
EM4	0.672
EM5	0.746
EM6	0.697
EM7	0.687
OIC1	0.606	0.823	0.541	.835
OIC2	0.676
OIC3	0.829
OIC4	0.807
OEC1	0.686	0.888	0.614	.890
OEC2	0.734
OEC3	0.809
OEC4	0.859
OEC5	0.818
ED1	0.662	0.862	0.557	.864
ED2	0.703
ED3	0.738
ED4	0.823
ED5	0.794
EE1	0.594	0.807	0.514	.813
EE2	0.718
EE3	0.835
EE4	0.700

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed using SPSS 26.0. The KMO and Bartlett tests indicate that the data are suitable for factor analysis (KMO = 0.925, p < .001). Table 3 reports the EFA results, which show that the factor loading values after rotation are greater than 0.5. The items are aggregated under the corresponding variables, indicating that all variables have good validity.

Table 3.

The Results of EFA.

Items	EM	PP	ED	OEC	EM	OIC	EE
EM1	0.043	0.114	0.355	0.120	0.720	0.128	0.014
EM2	0.066	0.119	0.319	0.172	0.782	0.106	−0.024
EM3	0.190	0.143	−0.099	0.320	0.778	−0.063	0.021
EM4	0.174	0.117	−0.151	0.352	0.759	−0.106	0.036
OIC1	0.275	0.130	0.151	0.187	0.043	0.677	0.099
OIC2	0.259	0.171	0.233	0.109	−0.005	0.708	0.115
OIC3	0.303	0.123	0.184	−0.007	0.041	0.723	0.192
OIC4	0.229	0.116	0.245	−0.017	−0.008	0.726	0.203
OEC1	0.197	0.184	0.128	0.706	0.077	0.194	0.065
OEC2	0.090	0.186	0.136	0.782	0.065	0.113	0.080
OEC3	0.099	0.124	0.044	0.795	0.247	−0.036	0.026
OEC4	0.150	0.137	0.044	0.826	0.179	0.029	0.052
OEC5	0.086	0.134	0.069	0.787	0.238	−0.005	0.033
EE1	0.086	0.134	0.155	0.125	0.076	0.157	0.733
EE2	0.090	0.172	0.311	0.116	0.090	0.153	0.705
EE3	0.144	0.141	0.355	0.027	−0.057	0.137	0.706
EE4	0.176	0.155	0.374	−0.038	−0.110	0.139	0.616
ED1	0.205	0.230	0.636	0.098	0.080	0.110	0.264
ED2	0.105	0.157	0.730	0.093	0.089	0.103	0.187
ED3	0.015	0.107	0.708	0.018	0.017	0.217	0.232
ED4	0.075	0.122	0.776	0.113	0.122	0.124	0.154
ED5	0.025	0.148	0.756	0.090	0.043	0.183	0.175
PP1	0.188	0.691	0.103	0.172	0.008	0.003	0.068
PP2	0.033	0.713	0.216	0.210	0.074	0.113	0.088
PP3	0.206	0.672	0.124	0.095	0.007	0.049	0.075
PP4	0.230	0.587	−0.003	−0.015	0.087	0.030	0.091
PP5	0.093	0.641	0.130	0.133	0.138	0.108	0.080
PP6	−0.035	0.659	0.211	0.184	0.102	0.156	0.048
PP7	0.169	0.682	0.045	0.073	0.076	0.116	0.149
EM1	0.676	0.087	0.086	0.018	0.148	0.115	0.077
EM2	0.702	0.155	−0.035	0.019	0.151	0.118	0.094
EM3	0.725	0.142	0.043	0.270	0.097	0.032	0.000
EM4	0.710	0.074	0.246	0.176	0.018	0.144	−0.026
EM5	0.706	0.118	0.173	0.173	0.001	0.184	0.029
EM6	0.685	0.176	−0.009	0.021	0.010	0.232	0.208
EM7	0.676	0.217	−0.019	0.086	0.025	0.233	0.164

To further confirm discriminatory validity, the HTMT ratio test was performed (see Table 4). The results indicate that the HTMT between variables was less than 0.85. Additionally, Table 5 the square root of the AVE is greater than the correlation coefficients, meeting the Fornell-Larcker criterion and further confirming discriminant validity between the variables.

Table 4.

The HTMT Ratio Test.

Variables	1	2	3	4	5	6
1. PP
2. EA	0.391
3. EM	0.497	0.347
4. OEC	0.469	0.211	0.654
5. OIC	0.475	0.587	0.404	0.295
6. EE	0.492	0.219	0.419	0.606	0.262
7. ED	0.491	0.325	0.344	0.598	0.323	0.740

Table 5.

Descriptive Statistics and Correlation Coefficients.

Variables	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
1. Gender	1
2. Discipline	.311**	1
3. PA	−.043	−.036	1
4. IEE	.051*	−.067**	.101**	1
5. FEE	−.028	−.047	.056*	.158**	1
6. EE	.099**	.068**	.096**	.042	.041	.714
7. PP	.036	.004	.204**	.021	.107**	.405**	.666
8. EA	−.061*	−.216**	.139**	.103**	.106**	.133**	.327**	.746
9. EM	−.095**	−.022	.064**	−.059*	.065**	.351**	.424**	.300**	.688
1. OIC	.060*	.061*	.079**	.031	.047	.500**	.392**	.157**	.556**	.736
11. OEC	−.052*	−.156**	.172**	.115**	.182**	.219**	.408**	.514**	.354**	.251**	.784
12. ED	.179**	.103**	.098**	.137**	.081**	.620**	.416**	.251**	.295**	.509**	.280**	.746
Mean	0.38	0.45	0.59	0.15	0.39	3.35	3.46	2.97	3.74	3.54	2.94	3.14
SD	0.49	0.50	0.49	0.36	0.49	0.90	0.75	1.01	0.81	0.91	1.05	0.95

Note. The numbers in bold represent the square roots of the AVE for each variable.

p < .01. *p < .05.

Common Method Variance

Harman’s single-factor test was performed to test for common method variance (CMV). The principal component analysis yielded six principal components with feature values greater than 1, explaining 63.161% of the variation in the variables. The first principal component explains 29.404% of the variation before rotation, which is less than the maximum of 40% (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Furthermore, the first principal component explained 12.891% of the variation after rotation using the maximum variance method, remaining below 40%. In addition, controlling for the effects of an unmeasured latent methods factor (ULMC) was further implemented (Richardson et al., 2009), in which common method factor as a latent variable was added to the based model (six factors model: PP, EA, EM, OIC, OEC, ED). If the fitting degree of the model in the case of including the latent variable is better than that in the case of not including the latent variable, then common method variance exists. Our result showed that after adding the common method factor, the RMSEA value increased by 0.001 (0.050 → 0.051), while the values of CFI (0.934 → 0.931) and TLI (0.925 → 0.922) did not increase but decreased instead. This indicates that after adding the common method factor, the fitting degree of the model did not improve. Therefore, no serious common method variance was observed.

Results

Descriptive Statistics

Table 5 reports the variables’ descriptive statistics and correlation coefficients. The maximum correlation coefficient between variables is .620 (p < .01). Therefore, this study has no serious multicollinearity issue.

Regression Results

Table 6 reports the regression results. The results show that PP has a positive and significant effect on college students’ ED (0.247, p < .001). Thus, H1 was supported. PP also has a positive effect on EA (0.410, p < .001). Thus, H2 is supported. PP positively affects EM (0.365, p < .001). Thus, H3 is supported. PP also has a positive effect on OEC and OIC (0.274, p < .001; 0.488, p < .001). Thus, H4a and H4b are supported.

Table 6.

Regression Results.

Variables	EA	EM	OIC	OEC	ED
Constant	1.551*** (0.118)	1.897*** (0.090)	1.194*** (0.097)	0.894*** (0.117)	0.801*** (0.072)	0.258** (0.091)	0.059 (0.095)	−0.096 (0.099)
Gender	−0.018 (0.049)	−0.210*** (0.038)	0.002 (0.041)	−0.053 (0.049)	0.206*** (0.039)	0.200*** (0.038)	0.192*** (0.037)	0.183*** (0.036)
Practice	0.120* (0.047)	−0.046 (0.036)	−0.011 (0.039)	0.157*** (0.047)	0.067^† (0.037)	0.005 (0.036)	0.008 (0.035)	−0.018 (0.035)
IEE	0.196** (0.064)	−0.161*** (0.049)	0.027 (0.053)	0.204*** (0.064)	0.263*** (0.051)	0.277*** (0.049)	0.212*** (0.048)	0.222*** (0.048)
FEE	0.102* (0.047)	0.048 (0.036)	0.012 (0.039)	0.254*** (0.047)	0.085* (0.037)	0.053 (0.036)	0.039 (0.035)	0.032 (0.035)
Discipline	−0.421*** (0.048)	−0.007 (0.037)	0.060 (0.040)	−0.298*** (0.048)	0.076* (0.038)	0.083* (0.037)	0.138*** (0.036)	0.131*** (0.036)
EE	0.016 (0.028)	0.208*** (0.021)	0.407*** (0.023)	0.086** (0.027)	0.630*** (0.020)	0.551*** (0.021)	0.484*** (0.022)	0.459*** (0.022)
PP	0.410*** (0.034)	0.365*** (0.026)	0.274*** (0.028)	0.488*** (0.034)		0.247*** (0.026)		0.141*** (0.027)
EA							0.137*** (0.020)	0.124*** (0.020)
EM							−0.075** (0.027)	−0.099*** (0.027)
OIC							0.274*** (0.024)	0.262*** (0.024)
OEC							0.059** (0.020)	0.039* (0.020)
R ²	.167	.241	.294	.225	.414	.444	.491	.499
Adjusted R²	.164	.238	.291	.222	.412	.442	.488	.496
ΔR²	.074	.092	.041	.098		.030	.077	.055
F	47.809	75.754	99.427	69.250	196.626	190.733	160.971	151.025
ΔF	148.259	201.584	97.845	211.802		91.465	63.403	45.744

***

p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05, ^†p < 0.1.

The results also show that EA positively affects ED (0.137, p < .001). Thus, H5 is supported. OIC and OEC also have positive effects on ED (0.274, p < .001 and 0.059, p < .01). Thus, H7a and H7b are supported.

Nonetheless, contrary to our hypothesis, we found that EM has a negative effect on ED (−0.075, p < .01). Therefore, H6 is not supported. A possible reason is that to start their own businesses, college students must bear the corresponding risks. If entrepreneurship fails, the financial and career development losses they suffer will be substantial and difficult to bear. In addition, college students often face serious resource constraints, which can make it difficult for them to meet entrepreneurship’s initial requirements. These factors combined mean that college students face greater entrepreneurial risks and losses than other individuals do. Although the potential returns are large, college students may not be willing to make entrepreneurial decisions given the trade-off between potential returns and the risk and losses they face. In addition, extant research showed that Chinese people are more risk-seeking than people in other countries (Lam, 2015; Rodríguez-Gutiérrez et al., 2020; Weber et al., 1998), which may be likely to enable them to establish a business venture (Gu et al., 2018). However, risk-taking propensity may induce a prevention orientation toward entrepreneurial action (Gu et al., 2018), leading students to weigh the risks or costs associated with entrepreneurial opportunities more heavily than the potential benefits or gains (Piperopoulos & Dimov, 2015). Therefore, this result confirms the theoretical viewpoint of expected utility theory rather than prospect theory, which is related to lower expected utility incurred by the potential risks and losses of entrepreneurship.

Multiple Mediation Effect Test

Following the conditional process analysis method (Hayes, 2013), multiple mediation effect tests were performed. The value of the total indirect effect was 0.241, with a standard error of 0.023, and the deviation-corrected 95% confidence interval of [0.197, 0.287] does not contain 0. This suggests that PP facilitates college students’ ED by promoting their EA, EM, and EA (i.e., OIC and OEC). Nevertheless, each indirect effect was tested. The results (see Table 7) show that the value of the indirect effect of the relationship between PP and ED through EA is 0.045. The 95% confidence interval [0.024, 0.068] does not contain 0, suggesting that EA significantly mediates the relationship between PP and ED. Thus, H8a was supported.

Table 7.

The Indirect Effects of PP on ED.

Mediation effects	Effect	BootSE	BootLLCI	BootULCI
TOTAL	0.241	0.023	0.197	0.287
OIC	0.221	0.021	0.181	0.262
EA	0.045	0.011	0.024	0.068
OEC	0.029	0.014	0.002	0.057
EM	−0.054	0.016	−0.086	−0.024
(C1)	0.099	0.020	0.061	0.140
(C2)	−0.176	0.022	−0.220	−0.135
(C3)	0.016	0.021	−0.025	0.059
(C4)	−0.274	0.031	−0.338	−0.217
(C5)	−0.083	0.022	−0.128	−0.038
(C6)	0.192	0.025	0.145	0.242

Note. (1) to (6) represent pairwise comparisons of indirect effects. Specifically, (C1): EA – EM; (C2): EA – OIC; (C3): EA – OEC; (C4): EM – OIC; (C5): EM – OEC; (C6): OIC – OEC.

The value of the indirect effect of the relationship between PP and ED through EM is −0.054. The 95% confidence interval [−0.086, −0.024] does not contain 0, indicating that EM mediates the relationship between PP and ED. However, the direction of the indirect effect is opposite that of the direct effect; thus, EM has a significant concealment effect on the relationship between PP and ED. This result is opposite what was proposed in our original hypothesis; therefore, H8b was not supported. This result suggested significant differences among different entrepreneurial groups. In this study, we focused on Chinese college students’ entrepreneurship, and showed a concealment effect on the relationship between PP and ED. This may because college students always lack resources, skills, and experiences related to entrepreneurship, and various external constraints, which may be likely to make them become risk-averse, further enabling them to make a trade-off between entrepreneurial cost and benefit. Furthermore, the success rate of Chineses college students’ entrepreneurship is below 5%. For example, this number is only 2.4% in 2015. Therefore, these actual conditions will further intensify college students’ entrepreneurial trade-off, even though they may have a relatively high entrepreneurial motivation, thereby reduce the likelihood of their entrepreneurial decisions.

The value of the indirect effect of the relationship between PP and ED through OIC is 0.221. The 95% confidence interval [0.183, 0.262] does not contain 0, indicating that OIC significantly mediates the relationship between PP and ED. Thus, H8c was supported.

Finally, the value of the indirect effect of the relationship between PP and ED through OEC is 0.029. The 95% confidence interval [0.002, 0.057] does not contain 0, indicating that OEC mediates the relationship between PP and ED. Thus, H8d was supported.

Pairwise comparisons of the indirect effects were also performed. The results indicate that the indirect effect through EA is smaller than the indirect effect through OIC, and its 95% confidence interval [−0.220, −0.135] does not contain 0. The indirect effect through OIC is greater than the indirect effect through OEC, and its 95% confidence interval [0.142, 0.243] does not contain 0.

Moreover, the indirect effect through EA was less than the indirect effect through OIC, and its 95% confidence interval [−0.027, 0.059] contains 0, indicating that the mediating effects of EA and OIC are equivalent. In addition, because EM has a masking effect on the relationship between PP and ED, the mediation effects of EA, OEC, and OIC are more significant than the mediation effect of EM.

Discussion and Conclusions

This study empirically examines the relationship between proactive personality, entrepreneurial awareness-motivation-capability, and entrepreneurial decisions in the Chinese context. The results show that a proactive personality facilitates college students’ entrepreneurial decisions. Proactive personality has a positive effect on college students’ entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and capability (i.e., OEC and OIC). Entrepreneurial awareness and capability positively impact college students’ entrepreneurial decisions, while entrepreneurial motivation has a significantly negative impact. The mediating effects of entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and capability on the relationship between proactive personality and entrepreneurial decisions were also examined. The results indicate that both entrepreneurial awareness and capability have significant mediating effects. However, entrepreneurial motivation has a masking effect on the relationship between proactive personality and entrepreneurial decisions. This result further confirms Chinese college students’ survival-based entrepreneurship due to lack of resources, specialized knowledge, and industry experience (J. Li, 2012), further leading to college students’ motivation to meet their survival needs (A. Li & Zeng, 2017) and risk aversion (Liu et al., 2018). In addition, based on a comparison of multiple mediating effects, the mediating effects of opportunity identification capability are greater than those of the entrepreneurial awareness and exploitation capabilities.

Theoretical Implications

This study contributes to our understanding of the relationship between proactive personality and college students’ entrepreneurial behaviors. First, previous studies have primarily focused on the relationship between proactive personality and entrepreneurial intention (e.g., Aryaningtyas & Risyanti, 2023; H. X. Chen, 2024; Crant, 1996; Luo et al., 2022). However, what entrepreneurial intention captures is the state of mind that guides individuals to focus on achieving a goal (P. Zhang et al., 2015), which reflects the extent of the propensity to start a business. This study focuses on college students’ entrepreneurial decisions, which reflect the actual behavior of starting a business (C. C. Chen et al., 1998). Furthermore, extant research has examined the relationship between personality and college students’ entrepreneurship (Batool et al., 2023; Brandstätter, 2011; Kerr et al., 2018; Mehrabi & Kolabi, 2012) such as entrepreneurial intentions (Biswas & Verma, 2021; Delle & Amadu, 2016; Delle et al., 2022) and motivation (Chan et al., 2015). However, our understanding of college students’ entrepreneurial behaviors remains limited. This study showed that proactive personality positively affects college students’ entrepreneurial decisions.

Second, this study contributes to research on the mediation mechanism through which proactive personality affects college students’ entrepreneurship. Extant studies have solely examined the effects of entrepreneurial awareness (Brownson, 2015; Fretschner & Weber, 2013; Netshilinganedza et al., 2022), motivation (Carsrud & Brannback, 2011; Stephan et al. 2015), and capability (Jayeoba, 2015; Ogbari, 2023; Svotwa et al., 2022) on college students’ entrepreneurial behaviors. Introducing an awareness-motivation-capability perspective allowed this study to examine the mediating effects of entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and capability. The results showed that entrepreneurial awareness and capability mediate the relationship between proactive personality and entrepreneurial decisions, while entrepreneurial motivation has a concealment effect. In addition, by comparing multiple mediating effects, this study also found that the mediating effects of opportunity identification capability are greater than those of entrepreneurial awareness and opportunity exploitation capability. These findings enhance our understanding of how proactive personality affects college students’ entrepreneurial decisions.

Third, this study extends the awareness-motivation-capability framework to entrepreneurship research by integrating entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and capability into the relationship between proactive personality and entrepreneurial decision. Therefore, our study contributes to bridging the gap between macro-level competition theories and micro-level entrepreneurial behavior models. The awareness-motivation-capability framework was mainly applied to inter-firm dynamic rival (Chen, 1996; M. J. Chen & Miller, 2012, 2015; Ketchen et al., 2004; Smith et al., 2005), and subsequently was extended to strategy, innovation, and knowledge management (Bloodgood & Chen, 2022; Shu et al., 2020; Stadtler & Lin, 2017). However, almost no previous studies apply this framework to entrepreneurship research. In this study, we investigated the mediating effect of entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and capability.

Practical Implications

This study provides practical insights to help promote entrepreneurship among college students. First, this study revealed that entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and capability are important drivers of college students’ entrepreneurship. Therefore, universities should consider how to stimulate students’ entrepreneurial awareness and motivation while improving their entrepreneurial capabilities. Specifically, universities should establish favorable entrepreneurial contexts, such as a comprehensive entrepreneurship education and practical system. Doing so can help college students understand the value, usefulness, meaningfulness, and importance of entrepreneurship, motivate their entrepreneurial awareness, and ultimately enhance their entrepreneurial motivation. In addition, successful entrepreneurs could be invited to share their entrepreneurial story and their understandings of entrepreneurship, further arousing students’ entrepreneurial interests. Furthermore, universities also need to help college students gain a complete understanding of the obstacles and risks that entrepreneurship may involve. They should establish a comprehensive entrepreneurship curriculum system to equip college students with specialized entrepreneurial knowledge. At the same time, connections should be established between credits and graduation to provide institutional support for college students to participate in entrepreneurial practice activities and encourage them to gradually establish entrepreneurial related capabilities through entrepreneurial practice activities. Additionally, relevant departments of governments at different levels should improve policy support systems of college students’ entrepreneurship (e.g., access to startup grants easily, business-friendly regulations, and tax incentives), and ensure the implementation of these policies. Furthermore, parents could provide some resources related to entrepreneurship education for college students, and encourage them to participate in entrepreneurial practice projects or entrepreneurial competitions.

Second, our study showed that the positive effects of proactive personality on college students’ entrepreneurship. Therefore, universities and families should commit to cultivating proactive personality in college students, and college students should also develop proactiveness in their lives and studies. Specifically, students should cultivate their own risk awareness through proactively participating in practical activities or innovation and entrepreneurship competitions, further establishing comprehensive understanding of entrepreneurship. Parents should focus on cultivating students’ proactive personality and fostering proactive behaviors. At the same time, parents should encourage college students to plan and learn independently. Schools should encourage students’ proactive behaviors through training, the curriculum system, and practical school activities. For example, talent training programs in universities incorporate cultivating student initiative and proactiveness into their training objectives and focus on this from a top-level design perspective. More specifically, practical elements should be appropriately added to the curriculum system design to effectively balance the ratio of theoretical and practical courses and encourage students to actively combine theoretical knowledge with practice. Through specific teaching practices, teachers should also consider adopting various teaching approaches (e.g., heuristic teaching, case teaching), enriching teaching techniques, further stimulating students’ initiative and proactiveness, and encouraging them to actively explore new things and fields.

Third, this study showed a masking effect of entrepreneurial motivation on the relationship between proactive personality and entrepreneurial decisions. Although this result contradicts the study’s hypothesis, it still provides some inspiration for college students to start their own businesses. Specifically, although entrepreneurship can generate many actual and potential benefits for college students, it also creates many potential obstacles and risks. Perhaps college students are more likely to overestimate the potential risks associated with entrepreneurship because they are unable to accurately evaluate entrepreneurship’s benefits and risk. Therefore, universities should strengthen entrepreneurship education and practical activities so that students can establish a complete understanding of entrepreneurship, and eliminate their concerns about starting businesses. This will not only help students understand the benefits of entrepreneurship, but will also enable them to correctly evaluate the corresponding risks and costs, avoiding either blind enthusiasm or fear of entrepreneurship. In addition, universities should establish a professional teaching staff with rich experience in entrepreneurship education to correctly guiding college students to carry out entrepreneurial practice activities. Teachers should focus on cultivating students’ learning capabilities and analytical capability in entrepreneurship education and practices, making them be capable of evaluating entrepreneurial benefits and risk. Additionally, due to entrepreneurial trade-off of college students, universities and teachers also should commit appropriate resources to the cultivation of students’ entrepreneurial spirit, thereby stimulating their propensity for risk-taking.

Finally, despite a relatively complete entrepreneurial policy system, policymakers also should further optimize the policy system for college students’ entrepreneurship, and make dynamic adjustments with employment environment, further establishing a favorable environment for college students’ entrepreneurship.

Limitations and Future Research

This study has several limitations that can be addressed in future research. First, entrepreneurial awareness could affect entrepreneurial motivation and capability (Kusa et al., 2021; Yitshaki & Kropp, 2016). Therefore, future research could investigate the relationship between entrepreneurial awareness, motivation, and ability, which could reveal the complex mediation effects. Second, this study did not consider the boundary conditions of our theoretical model. Therefore, future research could examine the moderating effects of contextual factors at the individual (self-concepts and identity), family (e.g., parent-child expectation discrepancy), university (e.g., entrepreneurial education), and country levels (e.g., digital entrepreneurship). Third, our survey data is cross-sectional, does not capture the dynamic changes across time. Therefore, future research could collect the data from multi-time points through longitudinal design.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Jiangang Wang

Xinlei Li

Ethical Considerations

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work is supported by National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science (20FGLB041); China National University Student Innovation & Entrepreneurship Development Program (202310289070Z); Jiangsu Education Department (2022SJYB0536).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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