Confucian culture and AI entrepreneurship: evidence from Chinese cities

AI entrepreneurship is rapidly emerging worldwide, and culture is a significant factor affecting entrepreneurship. Confucian culture, the most important traditional culture in China, continues to deeply influence Chinese people. The impact of Confucian culture on AI entrepreneurship in China has yet to be explored in existing literature. Scholars have drawn entirely different conclusions about Confucian culture and entrepreneurship. The "Ren" and "Yi" of Confucian culture encourage Chinese people to value crucial entrepreneurship, such as AI entrepreneurship, which is tied to the destiny of the Chinese nation, while devaluing non- crucial entrepreneurship. However, these three conclusions fail to distinguish between the types of ships and thus do not fully capture this dynamic. Here, based on data from all cities in China, we use the city's level of AI entrepreneurship as the dependent variable, the influence of Confucian culture in the city as the independent variable, and the city's carbon efficiency and financial technology innovation levels as mediating variables. We then employ the year and province two-way fixed-effects panel model to study the direct impact, indirect impact, and heterogeneity of Confucian culture on the level of city AI entrepreneurship in China. First, Confucian culture can enhance the level of AI entrepreneurship in cities. Second, Confucian culture indirectly improves the level of city AI entrepreneurship by enhancing a city's carbon efficiency and financial technology innovation levels. Third, in first-tier cities and cities with high levels of non-AI entrepreneurship, Confucian culture plays a significant role in improving the level of city AI entrepreneurship. Based on the current situation in China, we clarify the complex relationship between Confucian culture and entrepreneurship.