Trends and perceptions of youth entrepreneurship in China: a mixed-text mining analysis

Youth entrepreneurship is a vital force for China’s economic growth, educational reform, and rural revitalization. This study investigates the trends and perceptions of youth entrepreneurship in China using a mixed-text mining approach. We first conduct a bibliometric analysis of 260 academic papers from the CNKI&WOS database to identify key research themes and trends. We then apply Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling to analyze 7493 entries from Zhihu, a popular Chinese Q&A platform, to understand public perceptions of college student entrepreneurship. Our findings reveal a dynamic interplay between academic research and societal discourse. Key themes in academic literature include entrepreneurial education, policy support, and rural entrepreneurship. The LDA analysis of Zhihu data highlights concerns about entrepreneurial capabilities, business operations, and industry selection. We integrate these findings within an innovation ecosystem framework, identifying three core influences: subjective entrepreneurial capability, the macro-policy environment, and objective social resources. Notably, subjective capability is the most influential factor, accounting for 81.38% of the total topic proportion in the Zhihu data, emphasizing its critical role in entrepreneurial success. This research underscores the need for universities to enhance entrepreneurial skills training, for governments to provide robust policy support and improve policy awareness, and for industries to foster innovation and resource accessibility.