College students’ disciplinary expertise and their entrepreneurial intentions: an exploratory study based on foreign language majors with experience in innovation and entrepreneurship training programs

Taking foreign language majors with experience in innovation and entrepreneurship training program (IETP) as samples, this study investigates the influence of disciplinary expertise on entrepreneurial intention. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), a model was designed to examine the relationships among entrepreneurial intentions, perceived behavioral control, attitude toward entrepreneurship, subjective norms, IETP experience, foreign language self-efficacy and cultural intelligence. The data were collected through questionnaires and Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was adopted to test the hypotheses. The results show that: (1) perceived behavioral control and attitude toward entrepreneurship are sound predictors of entrepreneurial intentions but the influence of subjective norms on entrepreneurial intentions is insignificant; (2) IETP experience is directly related with perceived behavioral control and indirectly related with entrepreneurial intentions; (3) indicators of participants' disciplinary expertise such as foreign language self-efficacy and cultural intelligence are directly related with IETP experience and indirectly related with entrepreneurial intentions. These six variables included in the research model account for 53.4% of the variance of entrepreneurial intentions.