Autor/a

Joan-Lluís Capelleras

Coautor/es

Victor (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Ignacio Contín-Pilart

Martin Larraza-Kintana

Entrepreneurial growth aspirations are important to explain the growth of new businesses. However, little is known about the determinants of such aspirations, particularly in the hospitality industry. This paper examines the impact of both individual and contextual factors on growth aspirations in the hotels and restaurants segments. First, we argue that those entrepreneurs who found a firm in areas with higher levels of population density are more likely to have higher entrepreneurial growth aspirations. We then suggest that there will be a positive moderating effect of entrepreneur’s higher education on the relationship between population density and growth aspirations. We test these hypotheses by combining individual-level information obtained from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor project in Spain with province-level information gathered from the Spanish Statistics Institute for the years 2008 to 2010. The results of a series of nested regression models tend to confirm our expectations. However, the positive relationship between density and aspirations is stronger in the case of restaurant entrepreneurs. The positive moderating effect of entrepreneur’s higher education on this relationship is consistently found in both hotels and restaurants segments. Implications from these findings are discussed.

Palabras clave: entrepreneurial growth aspirations; higher education; population density; hospitality industry