1. Introduction
Entrepreneurship plays a pivotal role in a country’s innovation and long-term economic growth [
1] and also helps solve the problem of social employment [
2]. This is because it may contribute to the formation of many self-employed ventures as well as small and micro enterprises, which can help create significant numbers of jobs. In recent years, China has joined the ranks of upper-middle-income countries, although economic growth has gradually slowed down, entering a “new normal” stage of economic development. In this critical period of the country’s development, to achieve sustainable economic growth and successfully avoid the middle-income trap, a national strategy of promoting various groups’ entrepreneurship will play a crucial role [
3].
Following reforms and opening up of the country’s economy over the past 40 years, China’s economic development is a history of industrialization, urbanization, and labor force migration [
4]. The latter is one of the most important factors in the economic development of the “new” China. Among the labor force are “Returnees”, both a special group and a unique phenomenon emanating from the China’s population flow and labor transfer. Since this group was created in China’s special governance and political practice context and the global research is insufficient, the definition is still not clear. In addition, there is also a lack of a uniform theoretical viewpoint. In 2022, the National Health Commission defined this group as “people returning to the countryside from other places.” Thus, it can be seen, in China’s governance context, that the “entrepreneurship of returnees” means “people returning to hometown and starting a business in here”, with “hometown” in this context usually referring to economically backward areas, often in the countryside.
The livelihood strategy choice of starting a business in one’s hometown is an effective way to improve the development of returnees as well as their regions [
5]. However, due to the factors, such as venture capital shortage, lack of policy support and entrepreneurial infrastructure, the enterprises built by returnees have to face some adverse conditions: low resist-risk ability, high dependency on natural resources, and damage to the local ecological environment. The possibility of entrepreneurship failure is greatly increased, and the income of them will be greatly reduced, even resulting in individual bankruptcy and family breakdown. As a result, providing more comprehensive policy support as well as optimizing the policy attention distribution pattern in order to increase the entrepreneurship sustainability of returnees has become imperative [
6].
This paper creatively conducts a systematic qualitative and quantitative analysis of the policy texts issued by Chinese local governments from the perspective of policy attention as well as through the combination of programmatic grounded theory and social network analysis. The aim is to explore the policy attention evolution rules of Chinese local governments in dimensions of time, space, and specific policy domains, and the various tendencies of policy subjects participating in the cooperation network as well as how these rules help promote returnees’ entrepreneurship. It is found that the process of policy attention evolution of Chinese local governments is essentially a process of promoting the sustainability of returnees’ entrepreneurship. This paper also puts forward relevant policy suggestions to provide theoretical support for the political practice of Chinese local governments to promote the ability, quality, and especially the sustainability of returnees’ entrepreneurship. Finally, the overall research aim is to provide insights from China’s experience to help other countries explore ways to promote the sustainable development of returnees and their regions.
2. Literature Review
The concept of “sustainable entrepreneurship” was not clear until 2010, when JBV published a special issue emphasizing that “sustainable development” has become an important concept to reduce environmental damage and social problems and discussed the role of entrepreneurship in it [
7]. The concept of “sustainable entrepreneurship” gradually received validity. Before sustainable entrepreneurship, academic discussion focused more on “green entrepreneurship” or “social entrepreneurship”. Some researchers included both in the category of sustainable entrepreneurship, but an increasing number of research studies emphasize the difference among them: green entrepreneurship emphasizes the ecological innovation [
8] to carry out entrepreneurial behaviors based on green technology to realize the economic and environmental sustainable [
9]; and social entrepreneurship emphasizes the innovation of product or process innovation in order to achieve social goals and solve social problems [
10]. With the emergence of sustainable entrepreneurship, researchers have gradually paid attention to the possibility of the integration of economy benefits, society benefits and ecology benefits in entrepreneurship [
11]. The studies note that there is much academic research on entrepreneurship, mainly focusing on three areas: the individual influencing factors of sustainable entrepreneurship, the institutional influencing factors of sustainable entrepreneurship, and business models for sustainable entrepreneurship and types of sustainable entrepreneurship.
First, the individual influencing factors of sustainable entrepreneurship include the identification and evaluation of sustainable opportunities, the willingness for sustainable entrepreneurship and the behavior of sustainable entrepreneurship. In the identification and evaluation of sustainable opportunities, it is found that the perception of entrepreneurs’ threat to natural or public environment, altruism and entrepreneurial knowledge [
12] all affect the identification and evaluation of sustainable opportunities. In addition, factors such as entrepreneurial self-efficacy, pro-environmental values [
13], and personal initiative [
14] also have a significant effect on it. In the study of the willingness of sustainable entrepreneurship, sustainable attitudes and desire, such as altruism and external reward [
15], sustainable entrepreneurial orientation [
16], and business experience [
17] will have dual influences on the willingness to start a sustainable business. In the research on the influencing factors of sustainable entrepreneurial behavior, sustainable orientation, beliefs that entrepreneurship can affect the world [
18], the obtaining and maintenance of legality of the sustainable business [
19], strategic management ability, operation ability, the ability to embrace diversity and interdisciplinary ability, systematic thinking, specification ability, forward thinking ability and interpersonal factors [
20] all can influence the behavior for sustainable entrepreneurs.
Second, previous studies have shown that sustainable entrepreneurial activities are affected by macro, meso and micro factors. Among them, mandatory, normative and simulated isostructuralism pressures jointly promote sustainable entrepreneurial activities [
21]. These pressures are also influenced by macro (e.g., environmental regulations in export markets), meso (intermediary organizations), and micro (owners’ sustainable values) factors. In addition, factors such as resistant users (micro influencing factor), ineffective government policies (meso influencing factor), economic and financing barriers (meso influencing factor), and linkages between R&D and users (between micro and meso influencing factor) [
22].
Among them, the influencing factors of macro, meso and micro levels do not exist in isolation. It is found that both new and existing start-ups in sustainable entrepreneurship contribute to the formation of sustainable industries [
23]. In addition, collective organizations of enterprises can provide a coordination mechanism for achieving goals, thereby minimizing cognitive and practical barriers to sustainable entrepreneurship [
24]. The interaction between new ventures and public authorities, such as regional political coordination capacity [
25] and political participation of sustainable entrepreneurs [
26], can also have an obvious significance of sustainable entrepreneurial activities. Finally, in a conservative institutional environment (where there is no or fewer institutional supports), the activities of sustainable entrepreneurs will also have an impact on the sustainable market supervision, normative and cultural cognitive institutions [
27].
Third, related research also discusses the business model of sustainable entrepreneurship. Based on the perspective of evolutionary economics, the evolution process of sustainable entrepreneurial business model can be included as “variation to election to reservation” [
28]. In addition, the construction of sustainable business model should include at least the following five aspects: sustainable value should include the value form of economic, social and environmental benefits [
29]; needs a sustainable value flow system among multiple stakeholders including natural environment and society [
30]; requires a value network with new purpose, new design and new governance [
31]; and the innovation of sustainable business model can be realized by internalizing the externality through product-service system (PSS) [
32]. Finally, the existing studies holds that the sustainable entrepreneurial model should at least follow these principles: resource perpetuation principle, benefit combination principle, strategy satisfaction principle, quality management principle and contribution principle [
33].
Finally, research on the types of sustainable entrepreneurship is abundant. Based on the dimensions of entrepreneurial sustainability and entrepreneurial performance, types of sustainable entrepreneurship can be divided into “static type”, “transformation type”, “responsible type” and “constructional type” [
34]; based on the motivation of enterprise sustainable development, it can be divided into the types of “business driven”, “legal driven”, “lifestyle driven” and “value driven” [
35].
In conclusion, existing research on sustainable entrepreneurship has accumulated relatively rich results, mainly focusing on the individual influencing factors of sustainable entrepreneurship, the institutional influencing factors of sustainable entrepreneurship, business models for sustainable entrepreneurship, and types of sustainable entrepreneurship.
However, research on sustainable entrepreneurship has three deficiencies: First, local governments’ policy attention determines policy formulation in promoting sustainable entrepreneurship, while also reflecting policy development direction from the local government perspective. Although existing studies on this topic conclude that public policies affect all aspects of entrepreneurial behaviors [
36], few scholars discuss relevant policies of local governments to promote sustainable entrepreneurship from the perspective of policy attention. Second, returnees, as an important subject of sustainable entrepreneurship, optimizing the policy attention distribution pattern in order to promote the entrepreneurship sustainability of this group is of great significance for their own livelihoods and local development and should be taken more seriously; however, studies on this issue are relatively scarce. Third, most existing studies provide an interpretation of local governments’ policy on promoting sustainable entrepreneurship of returnees from the perspective of “what it should be” [
37] and follow an “idealized” path [
38]. This focuses on qualitative research from a logical reasoning standpoint yet lacks quantitative analysis of the reality of local government behaviors.
5. Conclusions
5.1. The Policy Attention Evolution on Time Dimension Has the Characteristic of Synchronism, Different Levels and “Reciprocal U”
On the basis of the main categories obtained from the programmatic grounded theory, namely, the main domains of Chinese local governments to encourage returnees to start a business in their hometown, this study identified in each year the number of policy texts related to the above four main domains. This reflects the allocation and evolution of the policy attention of Chinese local governments to promote the entrepreneurship of returnees in the dimension of time (
Figure 4). This mainly reflects the characteristics of synchronism, different levels and “reciprocal U” of the above-mentioned four main domains on the time dimension.
Before 2015, due to a lack of guidance from central government, local governments explored and formed their own policies to encourage returnees to start their own business, so the number of policy texts is small. In 2015, the General Office of the State Council issued a national public policy to encourage returnees to start a business in their hometown. After 2015, the local governments’ policy guidance and decision-making basis on this issue was gradually made clear. They established policies within the scope of the administration to make a superior policy, with less pressure of synchronous coordinates in policy attention to encourage returnees to start a business in their hometown. How Chinese local governments contact each other also relies on superior policy requirements and administrative structures and is somewhat fragmented. This avoids the problem of governance failure caused by policy attention imbalance between different local governments and their departments [
50] and forms a synergy between policies and actions in order to promote the returnees’ entrepreneurship as well as the synchronization of main domains in promoting the entrepreneurship of returnees.
In 2015, The General Office of the State Council issued The Opinions on Supporting returnees and Others to Start Businesses in Hometown. In 2017, the National Development and Reform Commission, the General Office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the Administrative and Human Resources Department of the Poverty Alleviation Office of The State Council jointly issued The Notice on Implementing the Five-Year Action Plan for Training returnees and Others to Start Businesses in hometown. As a result, the policy attention of Chinese local governments, which was originally relatively fragmented, gradually focused on completing the infrastructures, innovating the service system, improving the policy guarantee system, and improving organization and implementation. Under the sync actions of the state and local governments, the policy attention distribution of Chinese local governments to promote the entrepreneurship of returnees changed from strong to weak in relation to improving the policy guarantee system, innovating the service system, completing infrastructures, and improving organization and implementation, with variable levels of success in different policy domains. The focus of local governments’ policy attention is conducive to establishing and consolidating the policy support, service, and system foundation of returnees’ entrepreneurship in order to create favorable external and internal environments.
With the development of the governance of Chinese local governments to promote returnees’ entrepreneur, such as the construction of a business park, and the improvement of financial and policy supports, a better public service system and other infrastructure improvements made progress. After 2017, public policies related to completing infrastructure, innovating the service system, improving the policy guarantee system, improving organization and implementation gradually declined from this peak. At the same time, with the improvement of the governance basis of local governments in promoting the entrepreneurship of returnees, policy attention turned to improving the stability of entrepreneurship and the ability to resist market risks step by step. This helped promote the high-quality and sustainable development of enterprises, and also encouraged the allocation of the policy attention of Chinese local governments to move to a new state of competition and diversification, while the original distribution structure of policy attention was both dispersed and adjusted. As a result, the evolution of policy of Chinese local governments to promote the entrepreneurship of returnees shows an obvious “reciprocal U” structure on the time dimension.
It should be noted that the evolution characteristics of policy attention of Chinese local governments to promote the entrepreneurship of returnees are not static and unchangeable, but a dynamic process. The “reciprocal U” structure does not mean the decline of policy attention but indicates the diversification and richness of policy domains; it is a “relative reciprocal U” structure in the whole development cycle and policy domain. At the same time, the domain of improving policy guarantee shows a minor peak after 2019, due to COVID-19 outbreak, with a great impact on the entrepreneurship of returnees. Therefore, Chinese local governments issued relevant policies to ensure the orderly entrepreneurship activities of returnees in the background of normalized epidemic prevention and control. However, considering the sudden impact of this event, this study does not include an explanation and analysis of the policy evolution of Chinese local governments in the time dimension.
5.2. The Policy Attention Evolution on Space Dimension Is Closely Linked to “Pull” and “Push” Force of Local Population Flow, and Has Neighborhood Effects
The evolution of the policy attention of Chinese local governments to encourage migrants and returnees to start a business also requires investigation of the influence of regional attributes. This study adopts the homogenous division method based on
Strategies and Policies for Coordinated Regional Development released by the Development Research Center of The State Council in 2005, which divides China’s local governments (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) into eight economic zones according to their spatial proximity, similar natural conditions, natural endowments and social structures. This method can better control the economic differences within different regions, on the basis of internal homogeneity.
Table 5 shows the number of policies releases in the following eight economic zones from 2004 to 2021, and indicates the space dimension of the distribution and evolution of policy attention and the space dimension of Chinese local governments to promote the entrepreneurship of returnees, showing the following two characteristics.
First, the policy attention evolution of Chinese local governments to encourage returnees to start a business in their hometown on the space dimension is closely linked to “pull” and “push” forces of local population flow. According to
Table 5, local governments in the Middle Reaches of Yellow River, Comprehensive Economic Region, Southwest Comprehensive Economic Region and Middle Reaches of Changjiang River Comprehensive Economic Region have the highest proportion of policies to promote the entrepreneurship of returnees, indicating that the above regions are the most active and significant in the policy development. This is based on the desire of the above regions to increase the “pull force” and reduce the “push force” of local population flow into their regions. As already mentioned, according to the “push–pull theory” of population mobility, population mobility involves both migratory and immigratory places. As a result, differences and similarities of attributes between different regions or cities play an important role in the decision of whether returnees will choose to return to their hometown to start a business. Compared to the Eastern Coastal Comprehensive Economic Region and Northern Coastal Comprehensive Economic Region, the Middle Reaches of Yellow River Comprehensive Economic Region and the Southwest Comprehensive Economic Region are far behind in terms of economic development level, infrastructure construction and public service resources. In addition, employment opportunities, living conditions and other aspects also have no advantages.
Therefore, the “push force” of population mobility in these regions is relatively large, which also explains why Henan Province, Guizhou Province, Sichuan Province, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Anhui Province are the provinces with the largest number of labor service exports in China. As a result, these regions have a stronger will to promote the “push force” through policy to develop the local infrastructure construction, service system and policy guarantee as well as improving employment and living conditions in order to reduce the “push force” to attract returnees back to their hometown to start a business. This is the reason why these regions are the most active in the development of relevant policies. In contrast, regions with strong “pull force” and weak “push force”, such as Northern Coastal Comprehensive Economic Region, Southern Coastal Comprehensive Economic Region and Eastern Coastal Comprehensive Economic Region are considered migratory places. Large-scale population migration will make these regions face the reality and challenges of a complicated social structure, frequent population flows, diversified interest demands and varying values in urban governance. Therefore, they will have relatively little desire to attract returnees to return to their hometowns and start a business, thus, the proportion of policies release is low. Therefore, the policy attention distribution pattern of local governments should be further optimized and improved, and in particular, the attraction of economically backward areas for returnees to start businesses should be promoted gradually via reducing the “push force” and increasing the “pull force”.
Second, neighborhood effects also exist in the policy attention evolution of Chinese local governments to encourage returnees to start a business in their hometown on the space dimension. Through the study of Southwest Comprehensive Economic Region and Middle Reaches of Yellow River Comprehensive Economic Region, which have the most active policies to promote the entrepreneurship of returnees, this paper indicates that with Sichuan Province and Henan Province as the center, it has the strongest neighborhood effects among local governments in the regions. Furthermore, compared to the policies’ distribution in different local governments to enourage migrant workers starting a business in their hometown, it can be grasped quite clearly that the Southwest Comprehensive Economic Region and Middle Reaches of Yellow River Comprehensive Economic Region have central provinces: Sichuan Province and Henan Province. Within these regions, the local governments surrounding the center provinces issue significantly more policies than other regions and provinces, with a remarkable neighborhood effect, stemming from competition with and studying each other. With the Southwest Comprehensive Economic Region as an example, Sichuan Province issued Application Opinion About Support for rural returnees and Farmers in 2015. This was the earliest guide of the Southwest Comprehensive Economic Region to focus on related policies in order to encourage returnees to start a business in their hometown. It was followed by Sichuan Province, Chongqing, Yunnan Province and Guizhou Province, which also issued relevant policies. By 2016, all provinces in Southwest Comprehensive Economic Region had issued relevant policies. In the following years, Sichuan Province consistently took the lead in issuing policies and other provinces in this region followed, continuously releasing relevant policies with their own characteristics to promote returnee entrepreneurship. For example, Chongqing took the initiative in proposing a policy to adjust the interest subsidy for key returnee entrepreneurship enterprises. Thus, it can be seen that the policy attention evolution of Chinese local governments to promote returnees to start a business in their hometown on the space dimension has neighborhood effects, reflected in the interaction and development of policy attention of different local governments in the same region linked to geographical relationship, competition and learning behaviors. Moreover, the competition and learning behaviors among local governments in the same region will also promote the optimization of policies related to entrepreneurship of returnees as well as having a ripple effect for the policy attention distribution pattern from other angles.
5.3. The Policy Attention Evolution on Specific Policy Domains Will Gradually Spread and Diversify with the Change of Local Governance Environment and Stage Goals
Based on the main categories and corresponding categories obtained from the programmatic grounded theory, this paper statistically analyzed the number and proportion of relevant policy texts (
Table 6) in order to discover key domains of policy attention evolution of Chinese local governments to promote the entrepreneurship of returnees in specific policy areas.
Table 6 indicates that policy attention evolution in specific policy areas will gradually spread and diversify with the change of local governance environment and stage goals. At present, Chinese local governments mainly focus on the infrastructure construction of returnee entrepreneurs, especially the development of business incubators. The reason is that in the initial stage of encouraging returnees to start a business, the phased policy goal of Chinese local governments is to build and improve the related material infrastructure, to provide a high-quality platform for returnee entrepreneurship, including completed industrial parks and business incubators. It is also provided favorable development conditions and environment for entrepreneurship, to improve their success rate [
51]. In addition, business incubators with an industrial agglomeration effect can prompt new enterprises to improve their own strength, encouraging them to provide better high-quality products and services for the local areas, to improve the production and living conditions of the hometown, and to make contributions to the optimization and sustainable development of the local industrial structure [
52]. At the same time, the development of the online and offline infrastructure as well as grassroots service platform is also conducive to providing a more complete infrastructure guarantee and platform for returnees to start a business to encourage their sustainable development.
While the construction of the returnee entrepreneurial infrastructure is gradually improving, the governance environment of Chinese local governments to promote returnee entrepreneurship is getting better. Phased policy goals have shifted to improve the construction of the entrepreneurial infrastructure while optimizing the entrepreneurial environment. As can be seen from
Table 6, except for completing infrastructure, the proportion of policy releases related to improving the policy guarantee system is the highest, reaching 35.53%, including measures such as lowering the standard for starting a business in a returnee’s hometown, implementing policies to cut taxes and fees, and providing more financial support. Such policies will have a positive influence on optimizing policy support, financial services, social and economic factors, and science and technology environments for returning entrepreneurs, thus providing them with a good business environment [
53]. At this stage, local governments in China are gradually stimulating the willingness of returnees to start a business by building high-quality entrepreneurship platforms, providing a superior entrepreneurship environment, and gradually improving the quality of their entrepreneurship.
Finally, with the gradual improvement of the infrastructure construction and entrepreneurial environment, the phased policy goals of Chinese local governments to encourage returnees to start businesses in their hometown has also begun to shift. In addition, the number of policy releases in innovating the service system and practicing organization and implementation has increased. This also reflects the fact that policy attention is saturated in the policy areas of completing infrastructure and guaranteeing policy, and policy attention is also increasing in other diversified policy areas. To sum up, the policy attention evolution of Chinese local governments to encourage returnees to start a business in their hometown in relation to specific policy areas is gradually spreading and diversifying with the change in the local governance environment and stage goals.
5.4. The Evolution Trend of Collaborative Social Network among Policy Objects Has the Characteristic of “Loose-Central-Loose”
Based on the above social network analysis results of policy text released by Chinese local governments to encourage returnees to start a business in their hometown, this study takes 2015 as the cut-off point. It divides changes in the cooperation relationship among policy subjects in promoting the entrepreneurship of returnees by Chinese local governments into three phases: The period from 2003 to 2015 is the initial exploration phase, the period from 2015 to 2016 is the promote development phase, and from 2016, there is the deepening development phase. The visual network diagrams are drawn according to the analysis result.
In the initial exploration phase (
Figure 5), the breadth index is 7, and the network cohesion index is 0.913. This shows that policy subjects’ participation in promoting the entrepreneurship of returnees mainly include people’s governments at all levels, as well as the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and administration committees of industrial parks. The policy subjects involved are few and the breadth is low. In terms of cooperative processes, local governments issue leading guide policies, and other policy subjects implement policies according to policy requirements. The whole collaboration social network shows the characteristics of giving priority to local governments, with administrative innovations being the main way of implementing policies. Although there is a high intensity relationship among the policy subjects in this phase, it is still in essence an administrative, task-oriented, and loose cooperation network.
In the promotion development phase (
Figure 6), the breadth index is 23, and the network cohesion index is 0.98. A total of 23 policy subjects were involved. It is the stage in which the largest number of policy subjects participate, and the intensity relationship between them is extremely significant. Improvement mainly benefits from two aspects: First, after the initial exploration phase, the Chinese local governments’ policy goal to encourage returnees to start a business in their hometown is clear, and as the improvement of returnees’ entrepreneurial infrastructure and the construction of foundation platform develops, the work can penetrate into broader policy fields. Second, central government has continuously issued relevant policies to promote the entrepreneurship of returnees, encourage a positive response of local governments and integrate the promotion of returnee entrepreneurship with local governance and sustainable development. In this phase, the policy subjects and application fields involved in promoting returnees’ entrepreneurship gradually diversify, showing characteristics of multi-center radiating outward in the cooperation social network. In addition, compared with the initial exploration phase, the participation of financial departments such as the banks, the Ministry of Finance and the Tax Bureau, reflects policy attention to promote the entrepreneurship of returnees, gradually shifting from improving the infrastructure to innovating service system and improving policy guarantees. In brief, the cooperation social network among policy subjects in this phase shows characteristics of high-intensity, high-breadth, and multiple-balanced policy.
In the deepening development phase (
Figure 7), the breadth index is 17, and the network cohesion index is 0.426. This shows that the policy objects and practices participating in promoting returnees’ entrepreneurship are in decline. A total of 17 policy subjects are involved, and the relationship among them is significantly lower, suggesting that the policy attention of promoting returnees’ entrepreneurship gradually disperses. However, from the perspective of specific policies, although the lower intensity relationship means the reduction of cooperation among policy subjects, it also means the improvement of the independence of policy subjects. This reduction trend is the result of the policy attention of local governments to promote the entrepreneurship of returnees into a wide range of people’s livelihood applications and government service. Therefore, at this phase, the cooperation social network shows the characteristics of independence and dispersion, an important development reflecting a shifting policy attention toward accurate practice and application. In addition, compared with the above two phases, colleges and vocational schools as the policy subjects are also involved, indicating that the process of returnees’ starting a business in their hometown has grown from traditional returnees, as the main body, to include university graduates and new professional farmers. This development embodies a new direction of evolution of the policy attention of Chinese local governments to encourage returnees to start a business in their hometown.
To sum up, before 2016, the policy attention evolution of collaborative social network among policy subjects had the characteristic of highly fragmented and segmentary relationships, high-strength, low-breadth, simple and loose as the country’s emphasis and policy support on promoting returnees’ entrepreneurial skills. Chinese local governments and policy subjects responded positively, with their collaborative social network showing a diversified and balanced pattern of high intensity and high breadth. After 2016, with the gradual improvement of the relevant infrastructure and the entrepreneurial environment, Chinese local governments dispersed policy attention on promoting returnee entrepreneurship and moved to other policy and social fields; therefore, the collaborative social network consists of policy subjects with an overall trend of “loose-central-loose”.
7. Suggestions
Taken together, the conclusions of this study have a number of implications.
1. Giving play to and enhancing the initiative of all local governments in the distribution pattern of policy attention. Local governments at all levels are the administrative subject to promote returnees entrepreneurial as well as the main sectors of promoted policy [
64]. Therefore, various functional departments in local governments should study and judge the difficulties and dangers faced by local returnees sufficiently within the scope of their respective responsibilities, actively explore a more effective governance path to promote returnees’ sustainable development capacity and strive to turn the advantages of returnees’ entrepreneurship into governance efficiency that drives local sustainable development. In addition, local governments should give full play to their initiative, improve the policy attention distribution pattern, better collaborate between departments in the spirit of innovation and independence, aim to construct a strategic pattern of local sustainable development and optimize the distribution pattern of policy attention.
2. Promoting the transformation of collaborative governance model among policy subjects in the policy attention distribution pattern. Local governments do not work independently in promoting the entrepreneurship of returnees but need to work toward the full participation of all policy subjects [
65] and form a good interactive relationship to promote the transformation of collaborative governance model of various subjects in the policy attention distribution pattern of returnee entrepreneurship policy. This involves moving from the single-center model dominated by the local government to the multi-agent cooperation model with the full participation of market forces. For this purpose, the first task is to define the functions and roles of each policy subject. Local governments should make clear the basis and development direction of returnees’ entrepreneurship in their local area and focus on creating a good policy support and cooperation environment. Banks and other financial institutions should focus on innovating financial service channels, improving service methods, and increasing credit supply to provide continuous and high-quality financial supports for returnees to start their own businesses. Other social organizations should also focus on providing various aspects of support for returnees to start a business, such as collecting relevant entrepreneurial information, organizing entrepreneurial skills training, and researching entrepreneurial culture [
66]. Second, all policy subjects should strengthen the overall development, coordinate and promote deep and sustained cooperation, reduce the fragmented situation in promoting entrepreneurship of returnees, and form an extensive linkage cooperation relationship. Finally, under the guidance of national macroscopic policy, policy subjects should draw from their own characteristics and reality to focus on developing a policy implementation model with characteristics of guidance, operability and developmental, instead of mechanistic policy implementation.
3. Optimizing the policy attention distribution pattern according to the local situation and enterprise development stages. After nearly 20 years of exploration and practice, Chinese local governments have gradually improved the construction of entrepreneurial infrastructure, entrepreneurial environment and service system. At present and in the future, the focus of policy attention should shift to the exploration of ways to improve the entrepreneurial quality of returnees, step by step. However, there are still great differences among Chinese local governments in resource endowment, population status, financing environment and the conditions of entrepreneurship. In addition, the problems faced at different development stages are not the same for enterprises started by migrant workers returning to their hometown. There is both generality and individuality in the paths, methods and intensity of policy implementation to improve the quality of entrepreneurship in the hometown, closely related to the local situation and enterprise development stages. For example, newly established enterprises mainly encounter problems of capital shortage and narrow sale channels, while enterprises in the growth stage need to solve the problems of land use, employment, technological innovation and management efficiency. Enterprises started by returnees located in relatively closed areas are mainly faced with the problem of how to open product sales channels, while enterprises located in relatively developed and open areas are mainly concerned with how to achieve brand management. Therefore, specific paths to improve the entrepreneurial quality of returnees require conducting both theoretical and practical exploration, based on local situations and enterprise development stages.