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Introduction
Over the past decade, China’s central government has attached great importance to encouraging college students to return home and start businesses, in particular by supporting the expansion of the entrepreneurial space through IDRI and releasing the space for college students to return home and start businesses. As a practical response to the policy, through the policies of integrated development of rural industries (IDRI), Chinese governments and social organizations at all levels are promoting development models such as the integration of rural planting, breeding and processing industries, the integration of production, supply, and marketing, and the integration of agriculture and cultural tourism, so as to achieve the IDRI and promote the growth of the rural economy, and at the same time create more and better external environments for college students to return to their hometowns to start their own businesses. In addition, the Chinese government also encourages college students to return to their hometowns to development of entrepreneurial activities by providing direct support in the form of start-up funds. In 2023, China’s various government funds at all levels will directly support employment and entrepreneurship by more than 300 billion yuan (Data sourced from Economic Daily).
However, it is a basic fact that with the accelerated development of IDRI, the proportion of college students participating in entrepreneurial activities has increased more than fivefold compared to the past, but the success rate remains low due to the generally poor entrepreneurial performance. The entrepreneurial success rate of Chinese college students is 3% on average, while the entrepreneurial success rate of college students in the United States can reach 20–30% on average. It has been proved that IDRI can indeed promote the increase of entrepreneurial activities of college students returning to their hometowns, but the problem now is that the success rate of Chinese college students returning to their hometowns has not improved. It is not only a failure to achieve the desired objectives of the policy, but also a waste of government support funds. In order to fully resolve this issue, it is necessary to first clarify the mechanism of IDRI’s influence on the entrepreneurial performance of returning students.
We first reviewed the existing literature, up to now, there are two mainstream views in the academic community...