Perceiving an entrepreneurial climate at universities: An inquiry into how academic entrepreneurs observe, use, and benefit from support mechanisms

This article condenses a variety of entrepreneurship support mechanisms—formal and informal ones—and, more importantly, assesses touch points of university members who actually became entrepreneurs (i.e., academic entrepreneurs) with such support mechanisms. Specifically, we apply an individual-centric perspective and scrutinize to what extent academic entrepreneurs (i) observe, (ii) use, and (iii) benefit from entrepreneurship support mechanisms. Mapping survey data from 229 academic entrepreneurs with archival data covering 107 universities in Austria and Germany enables us to test a unique dataset through hierarchical linear regressions. Our results reveal that academic entrepreneurs' observation of support mechanisms is a strong predictor of their entrepreneurial climate perception. This effect is weakened by high shares of formal support mechanisms, emphasizing the important role of informal entrepreneurship support mechanisms. Surprisingly, the actual usage of observed support mechanisms does not have a significant effect on entrepreneurial climate perceptions at universities. Instead, the usage of support mechanisms only strengthens or weakens entrepreneurial climate perceptions depending on how beneficial the used support mechanisms have been to the academic entrepreneurs. Our findings illuminate that how academic entrepreneurs perceive the entrepreneurial climate at their alma mater hinges on their different levels of prior contact with support mechanisms.