Abstract: Entrepreneurial motivation refers to entrepreneurs’ psychological tendency that drives individual entrepreneurship, and it is the effective predictor of entrepreneurial behaviors. The article summarized the influencing factors of entrepreneurial motivation, which include the Big Five personality characteristics, self-efficacy, goals and environments factors, on the basis of introduction of concepts, structural models and measuring instruments of entrepreneurial motivation. Then the authors elucidated classical entrepreneurial motivation theories, containing pull and push theory, simple and complex theory, as well as the lately put forward theory of emancipation. Finally, the authors discussed the future directions about entrepreneurial motivation research.

Key words: entrepreneurial motivation, structural model, pull and push theory, emancipation theory