This work investigates entrepreneurial intentions among academic scientists. Drawing from\ud
the literature on entrepreneurial behavior, it contributes to delineate the differences in motivations\ud
that are correlated with entrepreneurial intention to those that are considered to be linked to\ud
entrepreneurial behaviors. By disentangling the concept of motivations in its ultimately basic\ud
constructs of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, we investigate how these two different types of\ud
motivations are related to the formation of entrepreneurial intention at the level of academic scientists.\ud
Through a survey conducted at the University of Ferrara—one of the leading universities in Italy\ud
in terms of technology transfer and scientific production—findings reveal that while academic\ud
entrepreneurial intention seems to be mostly driven by intrinsic motivations, the effect of extrinsic\ud
motivations, which are regarded as a main antecedent of entrepreneurial behavior among scientists,\ud
are largely mediated by academic positions, work environment and different combinations of these\ud
two factors. This work therefore highlights the importance of social norms in the investigation of\ud
entrepreneurial intention in academia
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.