3.1. The Relationship between Entrepreneurship Policy and Entrepreneurship Behavior
Entrepreneurship policy is a common measure and tool enacted by the government or relevant authorities that can play a key role in the creation and development of a business. The purpose of entrepreneurship policy is to provide a favorable policy environment to support entrepreneurs and provide policy guarantees for entrepreneurial activities that entrepreneurs have engaged in, which has a significant impact on entrepreneurial behavior, and there are many scholars who analyze entrepreneurial tendencies from the perspective of entrepreneurial environment and then guide entrepreneurship behavior. For example, Shane divided the entrepreneurial environment into political, economic, and socio-cultural dimensions at the macro level [
23]. Folmer considered that the entrepreneurial environment includes economic support, education and training, research environment, market mechanism, and cultural atmosphere [
24]. Angela divided the entrepreneurial environment into four dimensions, such as socio-economic conditions, government entrepreneurial policies, entrepreneurial site infrastructure, and entrepreneurial skills [
25].
As a more important factor in the entrepreneurial environment, some scholars have separately studied the influence of entrepreneurial policies on the entrepreneurial behavior of different entrepreneurial groups, such as migrant workers and college students, and concluded that the financial support provided by the government, such as preferential financial policies [
26], low-threshold loan policies, and smooth financing channels [
27], can provide support for entrepreneurship behavior. In addition to the government’s financial support, the government-provided standardized government regulations, perfect service policies, training and education, and other factors can also influence the development of entrepreneurial enterprises [
25]. Moreover, entrepreneurship education provided by colleges and universities can predict entrepreneurial tendencies and improve entrepreneurial behaviors of college students [
28]. The promulgation of entrepreneurship policies can compensate for the shortcomings of their innate endowments, and entrepreneurship policies have more influence on them. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:
Hypothesis 1. Entrepreneurship policy is positively related to the entrepreneurship behavior of college graduates.
3.2. The Mediating Role of Entrepreneurship Willingness
Why is the entrepreneurial response of college graduates not strong in the context of a richer entrepreneurship policy? This paper is based on the Model of Attraction (MOA) model, which is composed of three core concepts: Motivation, opportunity, and ability, all of which are interrelated and work together to influence the occurrence of a specific behavior. The MOA model was originally used to analyze individual information behavior in the field of information communication, and its comprehensive approach is reflected in the interpretation of behavior from both subjective and objective aspects. Motivation refers to an individual’s willingness to undertake action and is the driving force that motivates an individual’s behavior. Opportunity is an effective component of the external environment perceived by the subject that helps motivate his or her particular behavior. Ability refers to the knowledge, skills, and confidence required by individuals to implement a certain behavior.
Entrepreneurship behavior is a series of behavioral information analyses before college graduates initiate entrepreneurship behavior, including whether the motivation, opportunity, and ability to carry out entrepreneurship behavior are satisfied, which, in turn, affects the generation of entrepreneurship behavior. This paper investigates how entrepreneurship policy affects entrepreneurship behavior through entrepreneurship willingness based on the MOA model. Willingness is a motivation for whether behavior occurs or not. Entrepreneurship willingness plays an important predictive role in entrepreneurship behavior generation, which is categorized as a motivational factor in this study. The policy environment, as an important part of the external environment of entrepreneurship, affects individuals’ identification of entrepreneurial opportunities and access to resources. Entrepreneurship policies enacted by the government in various dimensions provide opportunities for college graduates to start their own businesses, which are categorized as opportunity factors in this study. Most of the entrepreneurial knowledge required by college graduates comes from entrepreneurship education in schools, and entrepreneurship policies mainly influence the entrepreneurship behavior of college graduates by stimulating entrepreneurship willingness, and the effect on ability is weak, so this study does not study the factor of ability separately. Referring to Gruen’s [
29] research on MOA theory, this paper constructs a MOA model of entrepreneurship behavior of college graduates and studies the path of “entrepreneurship policy-entrepreneurship willingness-entrepreneurship behavior” with the help of MOA model, as shown in
Figure 1.
In this regard, academic researchers have explored the role of entrepreneurship willingness in terms of its enhancement. Most scholars believe that there is a significant positive relationship between entrepreneurship policy and entrepreneurship willingness [
30]. Different scholars studying entrepreneurship groups, such as migrant workers and college students, have found that government initiatives, such as preferential loan policies, financial and tax breaks for entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship training, and hiring successful entrepreneurs to share their experiences, can all increase entrepreneurship willingness [
18,
31,
32]. However, current research also suggests that entrepreneurship policy does not have a significant impact on entrepreneurship willingness [
33,
34]. It can be seen that there are many types of entrepreneurship policy in place, but there is a certain lag in their implementation, showing the characteristic of “more but not stronger”, and there is a lot of room for improving their effectiveness in practice [
35]. Based on different contexts, this study characterizes policies from three aspects, such as finance and taxation, education and training, and platform, based on the MOA model, and analyzes the influence of entrepreneurship policies and college graduates’ willingness to start their own business. Effective entrepreneurship policy can provide better environmental support and financial guarantee for college graduates, which improves their confidence in carrying out entrepreneurship and thus enhances their willingness to start their own business, according to which, the hypothesis is proposed:
Hypothesis 2. Entrepreneurship policy is positively related to entrepreneurship willingness of college graduates.
The MOA model believes that opportunity induces behavioral motivation, which, in turn, leads to actual behavior, and scholars at home and abroad have extensively investigated and analyzed college students’ entrepreneurial behavior based on the MOA model, arguing that entrepreneurial behavior of college graduates is a purposeful behavior [
36]. Willingness is an antecedent variable of actual behavior [
37], willingness can successfully predict behavior, and attitude can successfully predict willingness [
38], and for entrepreneurship behavior, entrepreneurship willingness has stronger predictive power than individual variables and situational variables, etc. [
39]. In practice, however, ‘cognitive dissonance’ can occur in different contexts, and people do not always behave as they would like to, and behavior is unpredictable despite positive willingness [
40]. Therefore, entrepreneurship willingness does not necessarily lead to entrepreneurship behavior. This study re-examines the relationship between entrepreneurship willingness and entrepreneurship behavior based on the MOA model and proposes the following hypothesis.
Hypothesis 3. Entrepreneurship willingness is positively related to entrepreneurship behavior of college graduates.
College graduates are more emotional in their ideology, and their entrepreneurship behavior and willingness will be influenced by the entrepreneurial environment, family, and other external factors. When college graduates have more complete entrepreneurship knowledge and are supported by better entrepreneurship policy, college graduates are more inclined to start a business [
41]. The government has promulgated a number of entrepreneurship support policies, including the establishment of business incubation bases, tax exemptions, and housing subsidies, with the aim of stimulating college graduates’ entrepreneurship willingness and better implementing entrepreneurship behavior [
42,
43]. Based on the MOA model, this study argues that various entrepreneurship policies, as external environmental factors affecting the entrepreneurship behavior of college graduates, and the group of college graduates will form subjective incentive perceptions based on objective entrepreneurship policy, prompting potential entrepreneurs with the willingness to implement entrepreneurship behavior, and based on the above discussion, the following hypotheses are proposed:
Hypothesis 4. Entrepreneurship willingness plays a mediating role in the relationship between entrepreneurship policy and entrepreneurship behavior.
3.3. The Moderating Role of Awareness of Entrepreneurship Policies
According to Devlin, policy awareness refers to the extent to which the public is aware of the basic elements of a policy and the effects of its implementation once it is released [
44]. Most studies by Chinese and international scholars have used awareness of entrepreneurship policy as an antecedent variable, and existing research suggests that low public awareness leads to low entrepreneurship willingness. For example, Yang and Wang used a logistic model to show that awareness of entrepreneurship policy has a positive effect on entrepreneurship willingness [
43]. Brouthers showed that if entrepreneurs are not aware of the effects of entrepreneurship policy, they are not motivated to start a business [
45]. Huang Ansheng created an AIDA model of entrepreneurship policy information dissemination and showed that the lack of entrepreneurship policy dissemination was the reason for the low entrepreneurship willingness of college students.
In fact, the government influences and motivates entrepreneurship behavior by developing entrepreneurship policy that illustrates the cognitive process of entrepreneurs: Knowing-interest-expecting-acting. For example, the government has introduced a variety of entrepreneurship incentive policies to encourage college graduates to start their own business and will carry out policy interpretation work. Only after they know the entrepreneurship policy through various channels, the policy will be effective, based on their own needs based on the policy to generate entrepreneurship willingness, and then implement entrepreneurship behavior. Zhu and Bai’s research shows that only when the public is informed of the policies through various channels, will they consciously seek to obtain information that is beneficial to them, thus promoting the policies to work. Once the policies have worked, the public will pay more attention to them and will be more motivated to do so [
46]. It can be deduced that in the field of entrepreneurship policy, the increasing awareness of a certain policy among college graduates will lead them to pay attention to the effectiveness of the policy, obtain favorable information, stimulate the need for entrepreneurship behavior, and generate the willingness to start a business. Based on the above discussion, the following hypothesis is proposed.
Hypothesis 5. Awareness of entrepreneurship policy moderates the relationship between entrepreneurship policy and entrepreneurship willingness.
3.4. Moderating Role of Willingness to Use Entrepreneurship Policy
Willingness to use entrepreneurship policy is the degree of preference of entrepreneurs for policies that are eager to meet the demand situation [
47,
48]. In the process of starting a business, college graduates will inevitably need multiple resources, and it is essential to seek people, money, and materials from the external environment they are in. The entrepreneurial support policy for college graduates is regarded as a kind of entrepreneurial environment and is an important variable affecting college graduates’ willingness to make use of the policy [
49]. Some scholars have pointed out that entrepreneurship policy can influence entrepreneurs’ willingness to use policy, for example, the policy of entrepreneurship space expands new entrepreneurship space, and the continuous improvement of incubation bases can promote college graduates’ entrepreneurship [
50]. The government’s optimized taxation policy can provide a good policy environment for innovation and entrepreneurship [
51]. The policy of financial subsidies is an important way of government financial support, which can stimulate college students’ entrepreneurship [
52]. However, few scholars have studied the influence of willingness to use policy on the relationship between entrepreneurship policy and entrepreneurship willingness. This study argues that the implementation of entrepreneurship policy can bring benefits to entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs will be more willing to start a business if they have a higher preference for entrepreneurship policy if entrepreneurship policy is more responsive to entrepreneurship needs, and if they are more willing to take advantage of the support provided by entrepreneurship policy before starting a business activity. Based on the above discussion, the following hypothesis is proposed.
Hypothesis 6. Willingness to use entrepreneurship policy moderates the relationship between entrepreneurship policy and entrepreneurship willingness.
The theoretical model for this study is shown in
Figure 2.