How to foster women entrepreneurship? A “Big Five” framework for entrepreneurial universities

Literature has scarcely investigated how entrepreneurial universities can foster entrepreneurship in women, which actually represents one of the main challenges of contemporary societies. Little attention has been given to the predictors of women entrepreneurial attitude and the impact of the external environment on women self-employment intent. Building on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the Big Five personality traits, this paper proposes and empirically tests a model investigating the underlying mechanisms between women entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial university. The big five personality traits - agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and intellect - are hypothesized as the main antecedents of the TPB elements. Moreover, entrepreneurial university and government policy are hypothesized as environmental factors influencing female students' psychological mechanisms leading to become self-employed. Structural equation modeling is used to test this model on a sample of 240 female students enrolled in the University of Florence (Italy), an ancient and long-lasting example of entrepreneurial university.