Entrepreneurial Intentions amongst Retirees: The Role of Work Engagement and Need Satisfaction

Entrepreneurial intentions in later life are an understudied phenomenon; studies of intentions among retirees are even rarer. This paper examines the external validity of Vallerand’s (1997, 2000) Hierarchical Model of Motivation among 272 retirees in the USA. The results of path analyses reveal that the need for autonomy and work engagement pre-retirement play crucial roles in the potential decision to create a new venture, serving as the initial steps towards the formation of positive attitudes and perceived behavioural control; these in turn lead to post-retirement entrepreneurial intentionality. There is also a direct path linking the need for relatedness with the formation of post-retirement entrepreneurial intentions. The findings offer new insights based on social psychology that suggest why a proportion of retirees might choose self-employment or new venture creation after retirement from their main salaried employment in an attempt to meet their post-retirement needs. This can underpin schemes and policy interventions to encourage entrepreneurship post-retirement.