| Since the 21st century,the world has entered an “innovation age,” entrepreneurship and innovation have become the theme of the times.Entrepreneurship is a critical way to solve the problems with industrial transformation and upgrading.How to enhance regional entrepreneurial intention and behavior through improving the organisational environment has always been the starting point of the policies of many countries in the world,and it is also a vital topic for the field of theoretical research.Moreover,since 2010,this research object has been shifted from the research on the positive factors in organisations and society to the research on dark factors.The impact of corruption on entrepreneurship has also become an academic hot topic in entrepreneurship studies.Corruption is a widespread social problem in the economic fields of all countries in the world.While previous researches have explored some of the impact of corruption on the economic activities pursued by emerging entrepreneurs,or the impact of corruption on the performance of the start-ups.However,there is relatively little research on the impact of corruption perception on the entrepreneurial intentions of start-up entrepreneurs,and whether they are determined to follow their intentions to carry on entrepreneurial behavior.Therefore,in order to better understand the impact of corruption perception on entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial behavior,this study expands Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior(TPB)with institutional embeddedness rationality,a mediated model is developed and tested on the impacts of corruption perceptions on the entrepreneurial intentions(EI)and behavior(EB)of 400 graduate students who graduated from higher education programs from 8 different universities in Polish society a typical post-society.The model constructed in this paper considers the primary entrepreneurial inhibitor from multiple perspectives and explores the effects of:(a)classical intentional antecedent variables of TPB: Subjective Norm(SN),Cognitive Attitude(CA),and perceived behavioral control(PBC)on the participant’s entrepreneurial intentions(EI);(b)perception of corruption(PC)on their entrepreneurial intentions(EI);(c)perception of corruption(PC)on their entrepreneurial behavior(EB).A questionnaire-based on a five-point Likert Scale is used to quantify all the questions,ranking from 5 for strongly agree to 1 for strongly disagree.It contains 45 various questions and all the questions are divided into three sections based on the three antecedents of TPB.All the quantified data from the questionnaire is analyze by using SPSS and Warp PLS.Based on Gerbing and Anderson’s study,we conducted an EFA(specifically CMV)and SEM to examine the causal associations.Moreover,we carried out the(HTMT)to analyze the discriminant validity in the(PLS-PM,PLS-SEM),the crucial building block model evaluation based on CFA and PCA to evaluate the model capability.The results of the questionnaire survey showed that most of the students had strong entrepreneurial intention,but only a few of them started to engage in entrepreneurial activities in the end.This phenomenon contradicts the research by Estrin et al.and Melgar et al.that "entrepreneurial intention inevitably led to entrepreneurial behavior ".In order to further understand the reasons for the difference between the results of this study and previous studies,the author starts with the theory of entrepreneurial intention,entrepreneurial behavior and perceived corruption,and finds that the reason for this conclusion is that,on the one hand,it is due to the cognitive dissonance of entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial behavior.Entrepreneurial intention is a complex variable,different from the simple psychological variables mentioned in psychology.The emergence of entrepreneurial intention to the development of entrepreneurial behavior is a complex process influenced by many factors.Entrepreneurial intention is only a necessary factor for its expansion into behavior,but entrepreneurial intention does not necessarily lead to entrepreneurial behavior,which is based on psychology(According to the cognitive dissonance theory of the famous social psychologist Festinger).In the process of implementing entrepreneurial behavior,these graduates with strong entrepreneurial intentions learned that corrupt behaviors and other inhibitory factors in the entrepreneurial environment affected their entrepreneurial enthusiasm,which led them to be reluctant to engage in entrepreneurial activities.On the other hand,since there is no unified definition of the core concept of entrepreneurial intention in academia,previous researchers added a personalized concept setting to the entrepreneurial intention according to their own research needs under the premise of the same conceptual framework.Hence,the deviation theory of entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial behavior is also one of the important innovation points of this paper.After analyzing and comparing the results of the quantified data collected by the questionnaire,we found that the conclusions(1)(2)(3)and(5)all confirm the hypotheses put forward in this paper,but the conclusion(4)denies one of our hypotheses.The experimental data proves that corruption perception does not actually have direct impact on entrepreneurial intentions,while subjective norms,cognitive attitudes and perceived behavioral control in TPB can directly affect entrepreneurial intentions.Therefore,we adjusted three antecedents of TPB to enhance the entrepreneurial intention of entrepreneurs.At the same time,we modify the contextual features of institutions to reduce the perception of corruption,thereby improving the entrepreneurial environment and promoting the occurrence of entrepreneurial behavior.This research advances related theoretical research to a certain extent.It is considered that human behaviour is more often affected by the factors of external and objective circumstances rather than completely controlled by the individual will.To add the power in prediction and explanation of TRA & TPB on human behaviour,we added the variable of perceived corruption besides PBC,SN and CA and extended and revised the structure of TRA & TPB.This paper promoted TRA & TPB and reported a new model on these theories based on the follows:(1)The new model added several alternative variables(BBs,NBs,CBs,Past behaviour,Self-efficacy,Implementation intention)which can be used instead of antecedents variables from traditional TPB.(2)Comprehensive development of TPB Considering A.Standards and criteria for constructing TPB questionnaire,we first put forward the TACT principle that defines a behaviour from the element of the target,act,context and time.B.Norm-Focus Theory.A norm is a multidimensional concept mainly including three dimensions injunctive norm,descriptive norm and personal norm.C.Influence of culture on the subjective norm.Cultural property has become a moderator variable between subjective norm and intention.In contrast,it is just the opposite in the individualistic culture.(3)The application of TPB.This research extends the application of TPB into the following three categories.A.Predicting individual behaviour.B.Cross-cutting expansion of TPB,C.Intercultural application of TPB.(4)This research expands the cognitive psychology of corruption and enriches the theory of cognition and behavioral deviation in entrepreneurship.(5)This study expands the sample space of the impact of corruption on entrepreneurship.Cross-regional selection of Polish samples from Eastern Europe is not only because of the availability of data but also because Poland represents the social transformation in Eastern Europe.Corruption is also a big problem.These are the main problems that plague these EU underdeveloped countries.These studies will provide Eastern Europe with multiple cognitive mechanisms to explore the impact of corruption perceptions on business intentions and provide new research opportunities for crosscultural comparisons.In addition,this paper also puts forward a series of concrete and feasible suggestions from reducing the perception of corruption and improving the entrepreneurial environment.The theoretical and practical contributions of this research can guide anti-corruption research,anti-corruption actions and encourage entrepreneurship and other practical activities.It can be used to,for example,instruct the formulation of anti-corruption strategies for the public and private sectors,it can also be used to train university educators,business decision-makers,governments,and scholars,and it can also wipe out part of the development and encouragement of college students’ entrepreneurial intentions and entrepreneurial behavior obstacles.It will encourage people with entrepreneurial intentions to successfully transform entrepreneurial intentions into practical actions or entrepreneurial behaviors in the future. |
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