Mediating role of incentives and funding in academic spin-off creation: a PLS-SEM approach

This study examines how entrepreneurial intention (EI) influences the creation of academic spin-offs (ASOs) through the parallel mediation of incentives (IC) and funding (FZ). The proposed model integrates the Theory of Planned Behavior, the Resource-Based View, and the Entrepreneurial University framework. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 100 A1 research groups from accredited Colombian public universities. The analysis was conducted using structural equation modeling with the partial least squares (PLS-SEM) approach. The result shows that EI does not have a direct effect on ASO creation. Instead, its influence is fully mediated by IC and FZ, confirming a total mediation (VAF = 99%). Incentives explain 61% of the indirect effect, with a large effect size (ν = 0.09), while funding explains 38%, with a moderate effect (ν = 0.038). The main contributions of this study are twofold: (1) it validates a full parallel mediation model in emerging contexts, and (2) it provides practical implications for public universities, such as strengthening financial and non-financial incentive structures, fostering mentoring networks, and promoting innovative funding mechanisms to support academic spin-offs.