Behavioral determinants of HEIs researcher´s intention to collaborate with firms

Abstract

AbstractThe collaboration between researchers from higher education institutions and firms deserves more research efforts and knowledge about the practices that favor or hinder this essential and valuable activity. Hence, we make the claim that attitudes, social norms, and perceived control over collaboration with firms, influence the intention of researchers to collaborate or not with firms. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore the main researchers´ attitudes, social norms, and perceived control factors affecting their intention to collaborate with firms. We collected 297 completed questionnaires from researchers that collaborated with firms. Given the exploratory design of our research, we conducted several analyses using structural equation modeling. The study revealed that the main researchers´ attitude factors were: impact on students, institutional support, and researcher-firm relationship. The main researchers´ perceived control factor was government capabilities. And, the main researchers´ social norm factor was the community. Contributions of the results were discussed.

Keywords

• University-industry collaboration
• higher education institutions
• theory of planned behavior
• intention