Entrepreneurial activities are strongly influenced by the context in which they occur. It is therefore imperative to understand how different contexts enable entrepreneurs to create opportunities. In this paper we focus on the spatial context of rural entrepreneurs and explore how the rural context impacts on their opportunity creation. Based on a multiple case study we find that rural entrepreneurs mix what we refer to as placial embeddedness -an intimate knowledge of and concern for the place -with strategically built non-local networks, i.e. the best of two worlds. Notably, the entrepreneurs seek to exhaust the localised resource base before seeking out non-local resources. Our findings thus contribute to our understanding of entrepreneurship in context and challenge future research to explore how different forms of contexts are bridged in different settings to create varieties of entrepreneurial activities.

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We use the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) to explain how underlying psychological constructs influence farmers' decisions to extend their farm businesses to income-generating ventures outside conventional agricultural production. The analysis contrasts the influence of psychological constructs on this decision with those on decisions to specialise in a single farm enterprise or to have multiple farm enterprises. This is one of the first studies to introduce psychological constructs into the study of farm diversification. It is based on a sample of 929 Swedish farms participating in the official Swedish Farm Economic Survey. These data are supplemented with a detailed postal questionnaire to the participating farmers, generating a response rate of 73% and an effective sample size of 679 farmers and their businesses. Data are analysed with factor and multinomial logistic regression analyses. Results show that psychological constructs in TPB (attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control) influence farmers' decisions regarding the strategy they adopt. Attitude and subjective norm are found to be especially influential in these decisions. Given the prominent role agriculture still has in rural development policy, where the development of new ventures in farm businesses is perceived as the engine for rural economic growth and employment, these findings have clear policy implications.

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