A scientometric analysis on entrepreneurial intention literature: Delving deeper into local citation

Abstract

The present study provides a summarised view of entrepreneurial intention (EI) research to date. Before the application of scientometric techniques over the 1920 papers retrieved from Scopus, this paper collects the main systematic reviews and pioneering bibliometric analyses, and summarises their major findings. The use of direct citation, differentiating between Local and Global Citation, has not been used in the area of EI research. However, it provides the current status quo of this field of research, as well as interesting results on the progress of the study of this research topic, revealing previously overlooked findings. The application of scientometric tools allows us to identify the four thematic poles that concentrate the greatest effort of researchers in this area: modelling EI and discussing its antecedents and relationships; self-efficacy as an antecedent of EI; social entrepreneurial intention; and the effect of education on EI -distinguishing the effect of educational context from the effect of personal factors on EI-. It also uncovers the inspirational role of this area of research on others, while revealing the most highly specialised journals in EI, the papers that play a foundational role in the field, and the authors with the most extensive careers in this topic. This research also assesses progress on the most important challenges facing the field and raises some unanswered questions.