We propose the concept of pro-social research to describe the adoption of behavior by scientists who consider societal relevance to be a critical objective of research. We argue that pro-social research is a behavioral antecedent to scientists’ engagement in knowledge transfer activities, including firm creation. Our study investigates the impact of various cognitive aspects on the development of prosocial research behavior. In particular, we investigate whether cognitive diversity and research excellence positively shape pro-social research behavior, and more critically, whether they act as substitutes for prior experience in knowledge transfer activity. Our data are from a large scale survey of scientists in the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and administrative and bibliometric sources.
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