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Abstract: The benefits of entrepreneurial practices are an already established fact that moves part of the actual business market. It becomes then relevant to study the different factors that influence people found new firms. Although some previous works have provided a sound understanding of entrepreneurial intention factors, additional efforts are needed to consolidate this knowledge in a wider perspective. Particularly, most research works use students' samples but nascent entrepreneurs' samples are scarce. This article uses Liñan and Chen's Entrepreneurial Intention Questionnaire (EIQ) to collect data from a sample of 459 nascent entrepreneurs (non-students). Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) is taken as the theoretical framework to empirically analyse entrepreneurial intention of nascent entrepreneurs. Results indicate that data from nascent entrepreneurs provides a wider view on how intentions are formed. Furthermore, the research captures different control variables (gender, age, education and experience) among the respondents and identifies relevant differences among the subsamples.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial intention, Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), Nascent Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurial Intention Questionnaire (EIQ).
1 Introduction
New companies are creators of new jobs; therefore, entrepreneurship is considered an important economic force (Davidsson 1995). Not only entrepreneurship practices are an integral part of the renewal process that pervades and defines market economies but also entrepreneurial firms are an essential mechanism that enables millions of people (including women, minorities, and immigrants) to access the pursuit of economic success (Kuratko 2005). For this reason, the identification of factors predicting business start-up' success has been an important theme in the literature in order to make more efficient the promotion polices.
Researchers have approached the study of entrepreneurship decision-making process through the analysis of common patterns among entrepreneurs, such as personal traits, situational variables, or demographic variables; but in general, the predictive capacity of these strategies was low (e.g. McClelland 1961; Reynolds et al. 1994; Robinson et al. 1991). Studying entrepreneurship through behaviour provides a view of the conscious and intended act of founding a firm (Gartner 1988). In this vein, intentions seem to be the best predictors of behaviours (Ajzen 1991), and intention-based models seem to offer a better understanding of the influencing factors.
Research on entrepreneurship has been using students' samples, probably because their easy access. In fact, students enrolled in entrepreneurship courses do...