[Abstract]: This paper explores the determinants of firms’ attitudes towards R&D cooperation with
research groups understanding university-industry cooperation as a sequential process. In so
doing, we study the determinants of both firms’ interest in and decision to engage in
cooperation agreements. We applied both probit models and regression models for count data
on a sample of 375 firms from Spain, Portugal and France. Although most of these firms
showed interest in collaborating with universities, actually only 10% of the firms ended up
cooperating with them. Our findings firstly indicate that innovative firms tend to show a more
proactive attitude towards R&D collaboration. Secondly, within the group of firms interested
in R&D collaboration, the firms really involved are the independent or small firms and we also
provide evidence that country factors affect firms’ attitudes to R&D cooperation with
universities
