Heterogeneity of entrepreneurial intention among vocational college students: a new perspective on the intention-behavior gap through vocational capital

Entrepreneurial intention is an important antecedent of entrepreneurial action, yet individuals may vary substantially in how they translate entrepreneurial goals into implementation tendencies. This study adopts a person-centered perspective to investigate the latent heterogeneity of entrepreneurial intentions among 934 vocational college students in China. Latent profile analysis identified five distinct goal-implementation profiles, suggesting that entrepreneurial intentions may be characterized by qualitatively different configurations rather than a homogeneous construct.

Multinomial logistic regression analyses further revealed that psychological and social capital were significantly associated with profile membership, with students reporting higher levels of these resources being more likely to belong to profiles characterized by stronger goal-implementation alignment. In contrast, prior entrepreneurial experience was associated with a lower likelihood of belonging to the Low Goal/Low Implementation, High Goal/Low Implementation, or Moderate profiles, whereas human capital and demographic characteristics showed limited associations with profile membership. These findings provide a person-centered perspective on entrepreneurial intention research by moving beyond variable-centered approaches and highlighting the associations of individual psychological and social resources with differentiated entrepreneurial goal-implementation patterns among vocational college students.

School of Psychology, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China Jilin Provincial Economic Management Cadre College, Changchun, China The authors declare no competing interests. This study was approved by the Ethics Review Committee of the School of Psychology, Northeast Normal University (Approval No. 2024045) on November 10, 2024. The study was conducted in accordance with the ethical principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki.

The ethical approval covered the research procedures and data collection activities undertaken in this study. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to data collection, which was conducted between December 2024 and April 2025. All participants were adults aged 18–21 years and provided written consent before participating in the survey.

Participants were informed about the purpose of the study, the voluntary nature of their participation, their right to withdraw at any time without penalty, the use of their data for research purposes, and the protection of their anonymity and confidentiality. Consent was obtained for the use of participants’ responses for research purposes and the reporting of aggregated findings. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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