1. Entrepreneurial intention: An empirical
insight to nascent entrepreneurs
XXIII - ISPIM Conference
Barcelona - 20th June
Francesc Miralles - fmiralles@salle.url.edu
Carla Riverola - criverola@salle.url.edu

2. Agenda
Introduction
Literature Review
Research Question
Research Design
Empirical Results
Conclusions

3. Introduction
New companies are creators of new jobs  Entrepreneurship is considered an
important economic force (Davidsson 1995).
There is an interest on identifying the individual’s influencing factors on becoming
entrepreneurs to promote entrepreneurship.
– From the point of view of behaviours, intentions are good predictors.
Research on entrepreneurial intention has been using student samples, not many
researchers have included nascent entrepreneurs.
The main contribution of this research is to provide a deeper understanding of
entrepreneurial intention through the study of nascent entrepreneurs.
Results based on nascent entrepreneurs provide significant insights on the
understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour.

4. Literature Review (1/3)
First approaches were based on analysing some factors or common patterns among
entrepreneurs (p.e. McClelland 1961).
Gartner (1988) challenged the whole approach by arguing that the behaviour of
creating a new venture, not the personality of the founder, should be fundamental to
the object of study.
Focusing on the pre-decision stage of becoming entrepreneur, intentions seem to be the
best predictor of behaviour (Fishbein and Ajzen 1975).
Intentions capture the motivational factors (such as needs, values, wants, habits, and
beliefs) which influence behaviour (Bird 1988).
Intention-based models provide a good means of examining the precursors to
entrepreneurship (Krueger et al 2000).

5. Literature Review (2/3)
The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB): Indicates the effort that the person will make
to carry out that behaviour (entrepreneurship).
Personal Attitude (PA): The perceptions of the
personal desirability of being an entrepreneur.
Social Norms (SN): The perceptions of what
important people in respondents’ lives think Intention Behaviour
about being an entrepreneur.
Perceived Behavioural Control (PBC):
perceived ease or difficulty of being an
entrepreneur.
(Ajzen 1991; adapted to entrepreneurship by Kolvereid 1996)

6. Literature Review (3/3)
Lack of diversity on the samples used for testing the TPB in literature.
– Data collected exclusively from students.
– Student samples possess limitations
• Most students simply do not have the experience and resources to
judge whether they can be successful entrepreneurs (McGee et al.
2009).
– Nascent entrepreneurs are individuals who have yet to start a new business.
• They possess the desire to start a new business and are involved in
specific activities that bring such desires to fruition (Carter et al.
1996).

7. Research Question
RQ-1: Do nascent entrepreneurs’ samples exhibit different behaviour patterns
compared to student samples when analysing entrepreneurial intention?
Related to personal characteristics and situational variables:
– RQ-2A: Do male subsamples of nascent entrepreneurs provide significant
differences when explaining entrepreneurial intention, compared to female
subsamples?
– RQ-2B: Do age subsamples of nascent entrepreneurs provide differences when
explaining entrepreneurial intention?
– RQ-2C: Do educational background subsamples of nascent entrepreneurs provide
differences when explaining entrepreneurial intention?
– RQ-2D: Do nascent entrepreneurs who already owned a business exhibit
differences towards those who haven’t when explaining entrepreneurial
intention?

8. Research Design
A quantitative method to empirical support for the hypotheses
Survey EIQ (Liñán and Chen 2009).
– The EIQ is an instrument to measure Entrepreneurial Intention (EI) and other
variables (PA, SN, and PBC).
Sample  Nascent entrepreneurs who attended an enterprise educational
programme.
– Programme promoted by “Generalitat de Catalunya” & Labour Department.
• Requirements: Involved in an entrepreneurial activity for less than 3 years.
• Participants of different profiles: gender, age, etc.
– Surveys were administered in the initial training sessions (Sept-Oct 2010).
– A total of 459 questionnaires were taken into analysis.

9. Empirical Results
Sample R2 (EI)
Líñán and Chen 2009 Krueger et al. 2000
97 35.00%
533 54.90%

10. Conclusions
The literature review identified that researchers have been using student samples
instead of nascent entrepreneurs for analyzing entrepreneurial behaviour.
– Contribution: Analyse entrepreneurial intention on 459 nascent entrepreneurs.
Results
– Nascent entrepreneurs provide significant insights to explaining entrepreneurial
behaviour.
– Subsamples show significant differences among the categories analysed.
Limitations
– Exogenous influences, prior knowledge, motivational criteria.
Implications
– Practitioners: This research may interest those entities dedicated to developing
programs in order to enhance entrepreneurship by addressing intention.
– Academics: This project offers an accurate relationship of patterns influencing
entrepreneurial intention by analysing real nascent entrepreneurs.