Industrial clusters as hothouses for nascent entrepreneurs? The case of Tianhe Software Park in Guangzhou, China

• Published in: The Annals of regional science Vol. 57; no. 1; pp. 253 - 270
• Main Author: Fu, Wenying
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.07.2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anchoring; Clusters; Decision making; Economics; Economics and Finance; Entrepreneurs; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Economics; Environmental impact; Geography; Greenhouses; Guangzhou China; Hypotheses; Investigations; Landscape/Regional and Urban Planning; Localization; Location analysis; Microeconomics; Original Paper; Preferences; Regional/Spatial Science; Software; Studies; Guangzhou China; China; L26; P25; R00
• ISSN: 0570-1864; 1432-0592
• DOI: 10.1007/s00168-016-0776-3

Taking the entrepreneurial activities as a local phenomenon, this paper aims to investigate the way that individual’s active embeddedness in cluster environment influences on the entrepreneurial intentions and locational preference of the nascent entrepreneurs. Drawing on the employee survey data in the Tianhe Software Park in Guangzhou, China, the empirical results have distinguished between impacts of cluster on nurturing and anchoring nascent entrepreneurs. Firstly, it has been shown that the awareness of role model entrepreneurs in the cluster enhances the entrepreneurial intentions of the employees. Secondly, the embeddedness in personal relations with suppliers and customers has proven to exert significant impact in the locational preferences toward the cluster of origin. Overall, the findings of the paper have shed light on how cluster environment poses its impact on nascent entrepreneurs through different mechanisms in the different decision-making processes. The implications of the findings for entrepreneurial policy are discussed in the concluding section.