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Article History

Received: 21 March 2025

Accepted: 22 October 2025

First Online: 27 November 2025

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: This research has obtained the approval from the Ethics Committee of Anhui Technical College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, with the approval number AHJD20231030001 and the approval date of October 30, 2023. Upon review by the Ethics Committee, this research project is confirmed to comply with the ethical standards for social science research, with minimal risks and appropriate protection of participants’ rights.This research only involves human participants in the form of surveys or interviews, without any medical, biological, or clinical intervention. It adheres to the ethical principles of voluntary participation, informed consent, confidentiality, and data protection, and complies with the Declaration of Helsinki (as applicable to social science research) and national research ethics regulations. All research procedures will be conducted in strict accordance with the above-mentioned ethical requirements and the approval of the Ethics Committee.s

: For this study titled “Entrepreneurial intention among university students in the digital economy: the mediating role of alertness and the moderating effect of motivation,” informed consent was obtained from all 381 participating university and vocational college students (aged ≥18, with full civil capacity) before the initiation of data collection in December 2023. The consent was collected through two means: for electronic questionnaires, participants provided consent by clicking the “I agree” button after reading the consent statement; for paper questionnaires, participants signed printed consent forms. The process was overseen by the research team, with assistance from the student affairs departments and class advisors of the participating institutions. The scope of consent covers participants’ voluntary participation in the study, agreement to the anonymized use of their survey data for academic research purposes only, and acknowledgment that no personal identifiers would be included in data storage or analysis. All participants were fully informed of the study’s objective (exploring the mechanisms underlying university students’ entrepreneurial intentions in the digital economy), the absence of physical or psychological risks associated with participation, and the approximate 10–15 min required to complete the questionnaire. They were also explicitly assured of the confidentiality and anonymity of their responses, with all collected data to be encrypted and stored by the research team for 5 years before proper destruction.